


Embers from Ashes

by noconceptoflife



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blackwatch Era, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mild Medical Horror, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noconceptoflife/pseuds/noconceptoflife
Summary: He is a dragon without a flame. They are creatures that have nothing but hate in their hearts and ice in their veins, his father would tell him. Genji chokes on the ashes that clog his throat and suffocates in this prison of metal. If all he has is hate and ice, then that will be what they get. At this point it would take a miracle to become anything more.





	1. Kindling

The base is cold, always. Genji’s sensors that provide a constant flow of information tells him that the outside temperature is 13.8 degrees Celsius, but once he got up to the roof it was 13.4, cold enough that no regular person would willingly spend so much time out here. It's a good place to get away. Five stories up is the highest point in this place, and Genji perches on top. He could have gotten there another way through one of the openings to the roof, but he hadn't wanted to be detected. So he'd made his way up here on his own, avoiding the cold and avoiding anyone who would talk to him.

 

Avoiding people is easy, but sometimes people come to you, evidenced by the crunch of boots on the roof behind him. The very slight metallic jingle in time with the footsteps gives away who it is. But who else would it be?

 

"If they want me to get down they will have to make me." Genji says before Jesse can say anything.

 

"Yeah, well, Gabriel told me to make sure you don't do somethin' stupid up 'ere and gave me the security pass." Jesse settles next to Genji, his feet hanging off the edge of the flat roof in the same way.

 

He looks as he always does, but he has an extra serape on and he's gone longer without a trim. All black cloth and black leather and that one piercing in his left ear that Genji's never seen him without. Jesse digs in his pocket and takes out a small box, opening it up and then doing what Genji isn't expecting.

 

Jesse offers Genji a cigarette.

 

“What, nothing fancy?” Genji’s voice thick is and croaky, like how it always is without his digital voice alter.

 

“My fancy shit’s back in my room.” Jesse says. “Do you want one or not?”

 

The cigarillos come out after hard missions that have come close to taking their lives, but the cigarettes are regular. More than a few times Genji has watched Jesse sitting in their transport car, all the space between them as physically possible.  Those are the times when Jesse smokes and Genji cleans whatever blood might be on his armor. Genji’s never seen Jesse sharing the fancy ones with anyone.

 

_ Back in my room.  _ Genji thinks about that particular wording, as if he would share if he had them on him at the moment. Sweet of him.

 

Genji takes the cigarette and rolls it between his fingers, spinning like one would do with a pen. It's an absent thing he does now. Strange how fidgets transfer over even in this broken body of his. He used to like snapping his fingers to speed his thought process along. He's tried that before, but the sound is far too metallic and loud with his new hand.

 

Genji holds it in still in his fingers, staring at it. Angela would smell the smoke on him and raise hell for him and whoever she deduced he got it from. Not worth it. He hates seeing her upset.

 

He also feels as if taking it would hurt somehow.

 

Genji’s lips chap often, tongue never touching them and even chapstick is too much. The tacky sticky feeling of lip gloss he used to love is too much. It tingles where it touches the two jagged scars over his mouth. It’s his own fault. It had itched so bad when scabbing over, he’d bitten and scraped and picked at them until they healed, red and inflamed and tender.

 

He hates it. The other scars on his face have healed to a light, shiny pink over his patchy light coloring, but the ones over his mouth are dark pink and raised. Touching them doesn’t hurt, but it’s too much sensation and it makes his heart ache. It’s a particular pain that this part of him is broken. The synthetic parts of his body still feel different from his, like a thing he’s controlling in an advanced video game. Pain doesn’t feel real in the cybernetics. On his remaining flesh, he feels it too much.

 

Even fabric against the tender scars of his face is too much. Would he be willing to put something between his lips to have a reason to be around Jesse for a while?

 

Jesse lights his own cigarette. The click and soft hiss of the lighter makes Genji start from his thoughts. “If you don’t want it ya’ can jus’ say so.” Jesse says, gentle but casual. 

 

He's never been good at making the best decisions for himself has he? He only takes his mask off to brush his teeth, drink water, and have his morning shake of vitamin supplements and protein powder Taking off his mask feels like popping his jaw, which is somewhat literal as it does slot into his artificial jaw. The mask comes off with a gentle pop, the first time he’s taken it off in front of anyone other than Angela.

 

_ “I trust you.”  _ The little act said.

 

“I need a light.” Genji avoids Jesse’s eyes. 

 

Jesse’s a regular smoker, he handles his lighter with ease and lights it easily. Genji inhales, slow and thick. It tastes terrible, smells terrible, but the warm smoke in his one human lung feels wonderful.

 

“You ever smoke before?” Jesse asks. His voice is smooth and deep. He’s hardly past twenty five, there’s no deep rasp of a lifetime smoker yet.

 

“Sometimes.”

 

Expensive cigarettes only tasted less like death, then. He’d share them with lovers who smoked or to impress people he’d never see again. He preferred lime or lemon flavored candies laced with things that he couldn’t name, but swept away nights or days in exhilarating hazes.

 

Jesse hums in thought, his dark eyes on Genji. The younger man can’t tell where Jesse’s looking. Is it at the remains of his now-exposed face? He wonders if Jesse is looking at dull red glare of his eyes.  _ Blackwatch has it’s own Demon  _ he’s heard people whisper about him. The implants in his eyes itch, and flame up brighter when tears or anger blurs his vision.

 

What Jesse says, once he’s looked his fill, surprises Genji. “You look good, you know?”

 

_ Liar.  _ Genji rolls the cigarette in his mouth, pushing it from one side to the other so it doesn’t rest so hard on the scars. He trusts Jesse, but Genji can’t let himself be weak in front of him or anyone else.

 

“Hey.” Jesse says to Genji’s silence. “Don’t give me that look. Would I lie to you?”

 

“Yes.” Genji answers. “You are a good man. You would say anything if it made a friend feel better.”

 

Jesse puffs on his cigarette. Genji watches the slow rise and fall of his chest as Jesse savors it, eyes focussed on the natural movement. Ribs expanding and chest rising more than normal with the long and deep inhale. Jesse seems contemplative, and Genji hardly catches the smile spreading on Jesse's face.

 

He catches it when he's faced with the whole brunt of Jesse's self-satisfied smirk. “I'm pretty sure that you just called me your friend.”

 

“Of course that’s what you focus on." Genji grumbles. Inhales, exhales. "You have not left me alone, no matter how much I have told you to fuck off. I guess that makes you my friend.”

 

“Well, friend.” Jesse says. He flicks the excess ashes off the end of his cigarette. “I think you look good.”

 

_ You’re a liar.  _ Genji stays silent and watches the bright red ember at the end of Jesse’s cigarette get closer and closer to his mouth. The light red glow mixed with the white of the moonlight makes his stubble look rough and white-hot.

 

Dangerous thoughts. Genji puffs on the cigarette in silence, trying to focus on a calm moment for once as the harsh cold bites at his exposed face.


	2. Coals

Genji only ever half pays attention during early morning briefings. He’ll get his simpler instructions later. Break into a place, slice a few people up, clean up, then back to base. Sometimes the stakes are higher and Genji will come back with a new scar for the doctor to fuss over.

Genji has been to the Overwatch briefing room once after an afternoon with Angela. All airy and clean to the point where Genji doesn’t think it’s ever being used outside of press conferences. He’s correct, and sometimes he goes there for alone time. There’s nothing personal about it, it's only purpose for the use of strangers.

Blackwatch’s briefing room is nothing like that. Reyes keeps it professional in their interactions, but the room isn’t made for anyone other than them. Jesse sits on Reyes’ right side like always, with the ten or so other people filling up the rest of the space. There’s a basketball game going on in the background under Reyes’ talking volume while cigarette smoke swirls together. The only color other than grey and black is the coffee stains on the table or scuffs from heavy boots on the linoleum.

He’s used to letting his thoughts wander during these meetings but something Reyes says makes him snap to attention.

“Wait,” Genji demands, putting a hand up. “Back up.”

Reyes tolerates a lot of bullshit, so he folds his arms and glares at Genji, allowing the interruption. “Yes?”

“Say that name again.”

“Jia Zhu.”

“You mean Zhu Jia.” Genji corrects him with the proper order. “I know her.”

Reyes looks surprised at that. “Oh? Why don’t you fill us in? What do you know about Jia Zhu?"

“She is the new head of the Zhu family from the Jiangsu province of China.” Genji clarifies and waves his hand for Reyes to pass over one of the holographic maps of the area. Reyes does so without further prompting and Genji gets to work.

“The Zhu family there, it’s coastal. They are heavily into weapon smuggling. More specifically for personal military omnics and outfitting private security forces. They have some warehouses in Shanghai and ship out from there, but they do have one private ship that they use to smuggle small and expensive-”

Reyes puts his hand up. “Shimada, how do you know all this?”

Genji doesn’t look Reyes in the eyes as he starts marking spots on the map for where they live and where their private dock is. “I knew Jia and her boyfriend Siyu when I was nineteen,” Genji explains. “we were… you know, building up ties and all that.”

Hard to think that it's only been a few years since that particular threesome. It feels like an entire lifetime.

Reyes sounds skeptical when he speaks next. “And how did you know them?”

If Genji could blush he would have. These aren't his friends from the ramen shop he could brag about his sexual encounters with. These are peers, so he tries to be vague. “You know, business before I came here.”

“No I get that, but how do you know her and her partner beyond that?”

Genji might as well be honest. “They were both very interesting and also interested in me. I knew them in the biblical sense.”

“You slept with her?” Genji still isn’t looking up at Reyes, but he can imagine the expression on his face.

“Yes, but it was only for pleasure, and she had one hell of an ego.” Genji recalled how Jia and Siyu had him plastered between them so he could listen to their bragging. “And she liked watching other men with her boyfriend.”

In an explosion of sound, Jesse coughs out his cigarette and bends over, bracing his hands on the table as he starts laughing so hard he cries. Reyes lets out a loud sigh at that and waits for Jesse to settle down.

Reyes kicks Jesse out of the room when he doesn’t quiet down for a solid two minutes. Genji might be smiling under his mask as Jesse’s being shoved out. No one else will know other than him. Reyes sighs like he's been through hell and rubs his face. “I guess we need to make a new plan now that we have this new information. Break for today. Shimada, report to me at 20:00 in my office tonight so we can go over everything we need to.”

Genji is the first one out of the room like always. Eight PM with Reyes leaves him with most of the day that he plans to spend on paperwork that he can’t push off onto other people. He takes the stack to a private corner to try and put a dent in it.

Of course he isn’t left alone, showed by that tell-tale jingle of spurred boots as Jesse slides into the seat across from him. Jesse only ever leaves him alone if Genji asks him to leave. He would be lying if he said he didn’t like the company, even if it was Jesse playing on his phone silently. Genji feels the tiniest bit warmer when Jesse is around, the man is like a little space heater.

Still, something bugs him this time. “What was so funny about that?” Genji asks.

“Hm?” Jesse asks, looking up from whatever vintage phone app he liked playing this week.

“What was so funny about me having slept with them?” Genji clarifies.

“You ain’t seen Reyes’ face, I ain’t ever seen Gabriel lookin’ like that before. The way you said it was hilarious too. You ain’t a stranger to sex then?”

“The opposite of a stranger to sex. If sex were a person I’d be her twin brother.” There was a lot more to that but Genji wouldn’t be revealing what it was what he got up to in his free time. If it wasn’t spent at the arcade or at home then it was tangled up with another person. Personal information.

“What’s your type, anyways?” Jesse asks.

Genji doesn’t know if Jesse’s asking what kind of people he likes or his sexuality. He goes with the simple answer. “I like anyone who suits my tastes.”

Jesse nods to himself about something. “So you're pansexual?”

“That’s the word, or at least I do not know a better one.” Genji shrugs and flips the paper he's working on over.

“I’m gay.” Jesse says, friendly and light.

“Yeah, I gathered.” There is no way he can get along with a man this well and also have the man be straight. He’d thought bisexual, but Jesse didn’t give off that proper vibe.

Jesse makes an offended huff. “Oh, that’s nice. You can be a real dick sometimes.” Genji steals a glance, and Jesse is giving him one hell of an exhausted glare.

“Yet you still hang around.”

Jesse can’t argue with that, but he seems to be trying. “You’re interestin’ as hell. Somethin’ always surprises me ‘bout you.”

“I already have one person regularly poking around my insides. I don’t need another." Genji says in a gentle warning that Jesse without a doubt will ignore. "If you were smart then you’d have left me alone after that time I punched you for calling me ‘hun’.”

“I thought you punched me because I surprised you?”

“You put your arm around me and called me hun before we were introduced, I could have punched you for any number of reasons.”

Jesse’s all smiles. “I like you quite a bit, Genji.”

Genji rolls his eyes. “You’re okay. Keep it up and I'll show you my tongue piercing.”

The dumbstruck look on Jesse’s face has Genji laughing for the first time in what feels like forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey my friend made art https://jayzelnut.tumblr.com/post/162830597311/blease-read-casskrispytreat-s-fic-embers-from


	3. Catching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for blood, violence, and Genji's constant internal angst monolouge.

_ Forty-one percent.  _ Angela told him once. That’s how much of him is still blood and bone.

 

Now that number is thirty-nine percent. In the time between their first conversation a quarter of Genji’s spine has been replaced. It's a special kind of metal and fibrous material that threads through his body to mimic nerves. Pain doesn’t feel very real on them. At the most it’s an irritating sensation like an itch. Itches are somehow worse, especially when something itches on the inside. Angela scolds him for digging around inside all the wires and tubes. You pull a port and get half your body paralyzed  _ once  _ and no one lets you hear the end of it.

 

“Yer’ bitchin' out loud.” Jesse interrupts his thoughts.

 

“Cut me some slack, I  _ am _ the one suffering from blood loss.” Genji glares. It’s hard to maintain, especially when Jesse’s patching up a serious flesh wound.

 

Jesse laughs at him, the asshole. “I’m well aware pumpkin.”

 

“ _ What have I said about the nicknames.”  _ Genji means to shove Jesse away, but it jostles the both of them. It hurts bad, where the bullet grazed him and left a giant tear in his arm.

 

“Hold still.” Jesse orders as he tries to fix the rag wrapped around the gash so it tightens.

 

“I  _ am  _ holding still.” Genji snaps back. “You are testing me, McCree.”

 

“Bein’ a prick ain’t gonna help.” Jesse scolds, but his tone is gentle and placating. “It’s only an hour till we’re back at the base, then yer’ Angela’s problem.”

 

Genji forgets often that Jesse isn’t a perfect man. He has limits, gets irritated, and also has a basic understanding of medicine. Though he’s the best man that Genji’s ever met he still has moments that Genji wants to rip him to pieces. He likes Jesse too much to actually go through with it. Who else is going to play card games with him at three in the morning when he can’t sleep? Certainly no one else. He should be better to the few people he has left in the world.

 

Currently though, with Jesse hassling him and yanking his torn up arm around he’s going to be pissed. It’s easier than being pissed at himself.

 

“Okay.” Jesse says. “I’m gonna count to five, then I’m gonna tighten this thing up.”

 

Genji isn’t about to fall for this. “Angela already pulled that bullshit on me, you will wait and do it before you get to fi-”

 

Jesse yanks, tightening the rag a final time so it’s holding the gash over his forearm closed and covered. Genji makes sure to curse Jesse out in Japanese, Chinese, and then English once he runs out of things to say.

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Jesse says. The exasperated fondness brings an end to Genji’s cursing. “Cuss all ya’ want Genji, I guarantee I’ve been called worse.”

 

“I do not doubt that.” Genji’s still sour. That’s all he is these days, sour and mean and cold. How could he be anything else while he’s trapped in a metal body that he didn’t ask for? And the few things he has left that’s human keeps getting torn up or broken further. How long until he has to get a new arm? How long until his heart gives out and he’ll need to get something totally new? Will he eventually be left as nothing but a brain and memories?

 

“Yer’ thinking out loud again.” Jesse says. It startles Genji, but he doesn’t show it outwardly. “But I’m pretty sure that’s Japanese so I ain’t got a clue what yer’ saying.”

 

“What else would I be thinking in? Can’t you fuck off?” Genji dismisses. Thank whoever might be listening that no one can speak Japanese well enough to understand his half-formed words.

 

“Nah.” Jesse settles down to sit next to Genji. “Someone has to make sure you don’t get antsy and start messin’ with your bandages.”

 

So Jesse is still with him, sitting on the side that isn’t injured, perhaps closer than needed. “You do not have to stay.”

 

“Yeah I do.” Jesse dismisses. He’s leaning against Genji, pressed against his cybernetic side in the transport. Genji tries to sit away from everyone as much as possible, so they’re pretty much alone.

 

“I mean it.” Genji says, a grumble in his tone.

 

“So do I.” Jesse says and settles his weight to more press against Genji’s side. “Have you always been this cagey? I’m tryin’ to be a friend here. Even if yer’ an asshole.”

 

“I was fucking  _ shot,  _ McCree.” Genji grouches, but some of the bite leaves his voice.

 

The line of Jesse’s body against his is warm enough that Genji can feel it through his arm. It’s the nicer of phantom sensations. Jesse’s so friendly and touchy with him, despite Genji fending him off most of the time. Americans. Even back home Genji would never be like this with his friends. Maybe lovers or people he intended on becoming lovers, but not friends.

 

“And for the record, I have never been this cagey.” Genji says to follow up Jesse’s question from earlier. “It’s just something here. I used to be the opposite of cagey.”

 

“What? An open book?” Jesse asks. One finger trailing back and forth on Genji’s shoulder makes it hard to answer for a moment.

 

“The nicest term for it is ‘Playboy’ I believe.” Genji says. “I told you about that before. I didn’t think you would forget it.” He doesn’t elaborate or try to look at Jesse to get his reaction.

 

A part of him misses it.

 

He misses sex, being wanted, being beautiful, being able to feel his own heartbeat in tandem with another person. Women, men, enbys, anything that caught his eye that he didn’t have to hold onto. Blonds, well built or curvy or both, but enough he could get a good handful of their ass. As long as they were good looking and didn't care about him being transgender there was no problem. He tries not to think about it.

 

Another part of him tells himself that it’s what got him killed.

 

Except Hanzo was the one who got him killed, for the crime of not asking how high when told to jump. Genji can’t forget that. It keeps him going, knowing that soon he’ll be repaying that favor.

 

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Jesse says. He’s got a nice habit going of pulling Genji from his bad thoughts. He’d need to tell the therapist that. Genji only sees them when Angela forces him to, but they'd be glad to know he has a good influence.

 

“What doesn’t surprise you about that?” Genji asks.

 

“That yer’ a playboy.”

 

_ It’s not current tense anymore.  _ Genji thinks, but at the same time he wants to lean his head up and rest his head on Jesse’s shoulder. If Genji had an ego left then it would be a wildfire. “You do not have to flatter me. I know what I look like.”

 

“I think that it’s your charm.” Jesse says. “You have a kinda’ swagger, talkin’ to people. Makes sense that you used to use your words like that.”

 

Genji gets the feeling Jesse is not telling the full truth but he can’t find it in himself to comment. “I do not know if I should say thank you.”

 

“I mean it.” Jesse’s honest as honest can be.

 

Genji rolls his eyes where Jesse can’t see. “Then thank you, Jesse.”

 

“Woah, first name basis now?” Jesse teases.

 

Genji is very glad that he can’t blush anymore, or he’d be red as the blood staining the rag wrapped around his arm. He’s been Jesse for a long time, but Genji doesn’t say so. “I changed my mind, I actually hate you.”

 

Jesse’s laugh is sweet.


	4. Blister

Jesse isn’t the only friend that Genji’s made. He has to keep reminding himself of that, no matter how much it burns.

 

Tracer doesn’t look like she’s slept at all, which Genji has been counting on in this impulsive decision. He isn’t sure if she ever sleeps, or how that’s possible, but on the bright side it means that he can come to her in the middle of the night for a fun distraction.

 

“Genji!” She exclaims. “No one’s seen you for three days! How’ve you been?”

 

He likes that she doesn’t ask what kept him hidden for all that time. He’s hardly slept, hardly eaten, and been making escapes constantly to get away from people. Even Angela’s lab or Reyes’ office weren’t safe. He would know. Reyes had tried to call him out and make him sit down and talk. Angela was smarter and locked the both of them in the lab, making Genji have to escape into the air vents to get out of that confrontation. His pride was left behind a long time ago, there’s no shame if there’s nothing to be proud of. 

 

“I have been... around.” He shrugs one shoulder.

 

“Well what’s the occasion?” Lena blinks her big eyes at him, already excited for their normal antics. She’s not dressed for it, in a tank top and leggings with her accelerator in the corner of the room.

 

“I have to get out of here.” He tells her as straightforward as he can be.

 

Tracer’s eyes brighten. “Really? You got a plan for a night out?”

 

“No.” Genji answers. “I was hoping we could do something stupid.”

 

“Sounds like a plan! Let me grab my goggles ‘n my spray paint and we’ll get out of here!” She grins and disappears from the doorway, leaving him leaning there. To watch her in her messy room. Of course he averts his eyes when she starts changing, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

 

He can still hear her. Her voice is quiet and soft as she speaks into her computer. “Hey love, Genji’s taking me out. I love you, try and dream about me.”

 

Genji would feel guilty about breaking Tracer from one of her hours-long messages with Emily. He would, but he’d been the one to alert Tracer to the woman’s attention when coming back from a mission in Britain. He is sure Emily would have tried harder to get her attention, but Genji still takes some pride in the fact that he was a significant part in Tracer landing a girlfriend.

 

His friendship with Tracer is an odd one, he knows that it looks odd from the outside at least. They appear to be very different, but Lena doesn’t treat him like he’s any different from her. Neither do they try to get too deep with each other. That’s not the kind of friendship they have. She doesn’t vent to him and he doesn’t talk about his nightmares with her, All they do is have good fun that they can’t have with anyone else. It’s a blessing for the both of them.

 

“Alright mate, let’s get out of here!” Tracer tells him. She’s got her regular leggings on, jacket and accelerator in place, and a bag full of spray paint cans.

 

“Good.” Genji says. “Do you think we can manage to sneak out without getting caught?”

 

“Yes, but we’ll be caught getting back in.” She grins.

 

“That is nothing new. Maybe this time we will avoid messing up Morrison’s statue.”

 

“That was hilarious, Genji!” Tracer whines as they head into their usual room. It’s four stories up with nice high ceilings lined with large windows. It’s used as an office space during the day. The filing cabinets help them climb up.

 

“I have never seen Jack that pissed.” Genji notes. “I am sure he regrets having you square off with me that one time.” He smirks, and he’s sure that Tracer can pick up on that.

 

“Morrison made me clean it up on my own too, you can’t say that you got in trouble.” Tracer grumbles and steps up to him, placing her foot in his cupped hands.

 

“No I can not. Reyes gave me one of his ice cream sandwiches that he saves for himself.” Genji stood up tall and boosted Tracer up to reach one of the high windows. “I ended up giving it to Angela.”

 

“Should have given it to me!” She says. With that she expertly opens the window with a space big enough for a large man to fit through. She slips through easily, leaving Genji to climb up the wall after her. It’s wordless when she holds her arms out. Genji scoops her up and kicks off the building with his feet. He lands firm and hard. Legs soaking up the high drop while Tracer clings to him like a princess.

 

“Nice!” Tracer says.

 

Genji lets her go and Tracer drops down easily to her feet. “You could do that on your own, you know.”

 

“I’m not gonna waste my accelerator charges when I have a perfectly good friend with robot legs who can carry me down.” She taps his visor with her finger. “Let’s get out of here. I had my eye on that nice flat office building uptown.”

 

He knows exactly what she means. Overwatch had a meeting there once to promote good relations with the local populace. It’s just like Tracer to scope a place out for where her spray paints can best lay out what ever image she has in mind. As wise as she is sometimes, she’s still a fun loving woman at heart. It makes Genji feel more  like his old self, and if they’d known in those times Genji wouldn’t have hesitated to tear up the city with her by his side. After all, there’s no better wingman than a lesbian with a fantastic sense of humor.

 

“Race you there!” Tracer announces. There’s little to say after that, because they both take off as if shot from a gun. The building they’re after is twenty kilometers from the base, roughly.

 

What a sight they must be. Especially once they take to the rooftops the moment they get into town. Lena’s a dancing candle, nimbly jumping from the tips of chimneys to the edges of a rooftop. With nothing but the hot blue of her accelerator illuminating her she's a spark racing about. Followed by the faint yellow blur of her lightning-fast legs in those godawful leggings that she likes for running.

 

In comparison Genji moves like a shadow. Tracer can afford to be seen, to be illuminated in the smoky yellow of the street lights and the light of her accelerator. Genji cannot. He slips from shadow to shadow, clinging to walls and windows where the light metallic click of his fingers won’t be heard out.

 

Once they reach the first building in the bustling city outside of overwatch base Tracer is ready. She steps forward, wrapping one arm around his neck and the other around his waist as he jumps up. Fingers catch into stone and feet kick off as he scrambles up the side. It gets them to the top of the building, at which point Tracer casually steps off and away from him.

 

“That’s always an experience innit?” Tracer drawls. “Your body’s so cool, I wish I could do that.”

 

“You can trade me any time.” Genji scoffs.

 

Tracer winces. “Ah shite, my bad Genji. Lets just get set up.” That’s the good thing about her. She’s good at picking up on when she’s fucked up but doesn’t like to talk about it, suiting Genji perfectly.

 

Setting up for the both of them means turning on the small wireless speaker trained to Tracer’s music player and then setting out her paint cans. It’s fun to watch her work. It’s obvious that this is something she loves more than anything. It's in the way that she bobs her hips to whatever obscure lesbian rock group she’s into this week. It's in the way she's ducking and weaving something bright and colorful on the flat rooftop.

 

“Empty! Hup!” Tracer chirps, pitching an empty spray paint can into the air at top speed.

 

Genji’s repose is automatic. He’s right there when it comes down, his sword slicing right through the empty can. What he doesn’t expect is to be doused with bright yellow paint splattering him from head to toe. In his haste to keep up their tradition of destroying empty paint cans he never stopped to think she might betray him like this with a full can in his face.

 

Tracer doesn’t run away fast enough. Things happen, and Genji is rubbing Tracer’s face into her artwork. She switches between shrieks of laughter and shrieks of mortification as he drags her. “Nooooo! I worked hard on that!”

 

“Should have thought of that before you decided to play that trick.” Genji says.

 

He’s very glad that she uses a lighter brand of spray paint. This will wash off in a few days, but still, being tricked into splattering paint all over himself deserves retribution.

 

Tracer yelps again and kicks out, catching Genji by surprise. He pins her down in the wrestle that ensues.

 

“Mercy, mercy!” Tracer cries with glee.

 

“Angela isn’t here to save you now.” Genji says with all the grimness of an executioner.

 

She has to laugh in response. “You know Genji, I like you quite a bit.”

 

He backs off and sits back down, examining himself. With the hot yellow of the paint over the faint red of his glowing sensors he looks… eerie. Like a sulfuric rock holding embers in the seams. It’s certainly an interesting look, he’d need to look into that. “You only say that because I set you up with your girlfriend.”

 

Tracer’s smart enough that she can pick up the dry humor in Genji’s tone. “Aw, don’t say that! That’s only about three quarters of the reason I like you!”

 

She looks awful, with her hair caked in the yellow, green, and orange that she’d been painting with before Genji dragged her face through it. Very suddenly he feels a rush of affection, sweet and platonic and familial. "Things like this make you my favorite friend." Genji says. With Tracer there's no effort on her part, she can read the smile in his voice.

 

"Aw, thanks Genji!" Her answering smile makes Genji feel a little sour. He knows that he doesn't hand out sweet words and compliments with ease.

 

"It is nothing." He dismisses, but Lena has never been one to brush a thing off on her own time.

 

"Hardly! I thought the spot of first on your friend list would be for McCree." She asks.    
  
Doesn't that kill his good mood? "Jessie does not have a place on the friend list anymore." He grumbles. “That’s why I wanted to get out of there. If I was stuck trying to avoid him for another day I’d lose it.”    
  
"Uh-oh Spaghetti-ohs!" Tracer whistles. "Subject change?" She offers, giving him an easy way out.

 

“Ah… it’s nothing.” He shrugs. “How about you tell me about how Emily’s doing?”

 

Tracer needs no further prompting. As she launches into the recent happenings of her girlfriend Genji thinks that this is good. It's friendly fun with a person that doesn't expect him to be anything other than himself. There's no pressing need to impress her or do good by her when the only thing he has to do for that is be himself. He doesn't even know who himself is, other than that she brings out something good. His thing with Tracer is nothing like with Jesse. This is easy and fun and free of complication. There’s nothing hard about this, nothing stressful, nothing painful. Why can’t his thing with Jesse be like this? And why isn’t this enough to distract him?

 

… he needs to talk to Jesse, doesn’t he? Some time in the future he’ll have to do that, but for now he hopes that Tracer can keep him distracted.


	5. Burn

Blackwatch’s training room was one that Genji often took refuge in when he couldn’t find it in him to wind down and sleep. At this hour he didn’t have company save for one other person who couldn’t rest.

Genji forgot often that Jesse had his own ghosts that kept him up a night. Or maybe he was kind enough to keep Genji company tonight. Genji suspected both since Jesse had spent the last thirty minutes cleaning the same piece of peacekeeper while keeping an eye on Genji. The rest of the bench was taken up by Genji’s internal arm slots that held his throwing stars, and his sword. Not like Jesse knew how to use it.

Why bother keeping an eye on Genj during this time? Was it to keep an eye on him for the superiors? Was it to watch out of Genji himself? He had no idea, Jesse was hard to understand if Genji couldn’t read it on the surface.

“So.” Jesse said. “What’s with the blades?”

“Firearms are not good for close combat.” Genji shrugged one shoulder. “I am made for close combat.”

“Ya’ mean yer  _ good _ at close combat?” Jesse corrected him.

The glare Genji shot Jesse’s way was as venomous as he could make it. “When are you going to stop getting hung up on semantics?”

“When ya’ stop calling yourself an object, sugar.” Jesse’s finger caught on a part of peacekeeper, and the pistol shot off a small shower of sparks. With the dim watery blue lighting of the Blackwatch training rooms, they seared white-hot before sputtering out on Jesse’s dark jeans.

Genji hoped that Jesse could pick up on the eye roll he sent his way. “Whatever. I felt the need to practice with something other than my normal way of fighting.”

“Those throwin’ knives are pretty.” Jesse commented.

Genji agreed. Sleek and black and light, it sliced up the tough layered cardboard to stick out handle-first. The practice was needed, especially for his human arm to keep up with his synthetic arm.

“Hey, Genji, can I ask you somethin’?” Jesse asked. Genji could hear his footsteps approach him as Genji let the last knife fling from his hand.

“What?” Genji turned and-

Genji wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. All he knew was that he had to act fast or he’d be in worse shape than he already was. He didn’t have time to think about how impossible it was for him to be here. The only thing on his mind was that Hanzo’s had gotten  _ behind him _ and was here to finish him off and he had to  _ get away _ .

Genji jumped back, falling to the floor with a loud metallic clang. Hanzo stared at him in wide-eyed shock while Genji scrambled back, terrified to turn his back on the monster who did this to him. The metal of his reformed right shoulder hit the target behind him. Hanzo had his sword and was between him and his weapons. The light glimmering off his blade was just blue enough to instill a new fear in Genji, a sharper terror clutching his chest.

“Genj-” Hanzo began to speak.

His fingers scrambled up and tightened around one of the throwing knives. Sleek, black, and light. Yanking it out of the tough cardboard was instantaneous, flipping it quickly around in his hand. His arm was snapping forward with an aim towards the throat of his brother.

“Genji!” Hanzo yelped in a voice that was not his own, reflexes hardly dodging the knife aimed to kill. He didn’t sound like himself, deeper and rougher than Genji had ever heard. How much had Hanzo changed in this time?

Genji hurled another knife, and that one missed as well. “Genji! Stop it! Snap out of it!” Hanzo shouted. In English, that should have been Genji’s first clue.

“Get away from me!” Genji screamed back in Japanese. Hanzo took so much from him. His dragons, his body, and now in the one place he ever felt safe here he was to take what was left. Not again. Never again.

The next knife was… shot out of his hand? His metal fingers tingled from where the bullet twanged on the blade before being knocked away. He was out of knives that he can reach, so instead he yanked his smaller sword out of its sheath, prepared to dash forward and pay Hanzo what he was owed.

It was the first clear look he got at Hanzo that wasn’t clouded with terror. It was also the moment he realized… that wasn’t Hanzo.

Genji blinked. His eyes flick up and down Jesse’s form, taking in the hard grip that Jesse has on his gun and the horror in the man’s expression. Genji’s sword was on the ground in front of Jesse. Dropped it, once he realized that he’d need to defend himself. Defend himself from Genji. Of course, it wasn’t Hanzo. Jesse would never let anyone get close to him with a weapon, after all.

Not like how Genji went after Jesse. Genji felt the blood drain from his face and his empty stomach roll as he realized what he had done to Jesse.  _ I could have killed him.  _ One of the few people in the world that Genji never wanted to hurt.

“Genji.” Jesse says, quieter. “You with me?”

Genji staggered to his feet, bracing against the target. “I’m leaving.”

“Hey, hey.” Jesse let his guard down as Genji paced by. “Come on, we should talk about that.” Jesse’s hand went out to touch Genji’s shoulder.

Genji’s grip on Jesse’s wrist was immediate, and with a twist of his arm Jesse was yanked away from him and his arm thrown to the side. “Don’t touch me.” Genji snarled.

The cyborg kicked his foot and caught on the end of his blade, expertly hooking his foot up so the blade jumped up handle-first into his hand. “And don’t ever touch this again.”

“Gen-”

Genji slammed the door to the training room shut behind him. It was foolish to run away from this. A fool he was then. The moment the door was closed he took off sprinting as far away as possible.

…

He tells Angela the short version. “He approached me with my sword from behind. I thought it was… you know… coming to finish me off. I almost killed him.”

Angela looks awful. More awful than usual as she hooks him up to the machine that provides him with the extra energy that he needs to be combat ready. He can only avoid her for so long, and he knows that Jesse has been swinging by at Genji’s normal hours to see if he can catch him. So instead of his usual late-night sessions, he comes at a reasonable hour. It’s a good plan since it’s been another week and Jesse hasn’t spotted Genji yet.

“He would forgive you.” Angela says.

Genji knows it’s true. “I think it is too late for that.”

“ _ Genji _ .” Angela says in that voice of hers.

“ _ Doctor _ .” Genji says, mocking her. She pinches his ear nub for that, and he winces at the sharp sound of static that comes from her fingers pressed against it.

Angela shakes her head at him and lets him go. “He came to me in tears, you know. After the first two days, you disappeared. He thinks you hate him now. That he crossed some line that can’t be fixed. He misses you.”

“He would be better off not bothering with me.”

Genji winces as Angela snaps a cord into the port on the part of his back where his artificial spine meets his organic one. The pain there can’t just be turned off, no matter how much he tries. She hums at him, soothing and comforting in a way that’s taken them months to figure out.

“Be that as it may.” Angela says. “He doesn’t know what he did. He doesn’t blame you. In his mind a friend that he’s spent months trying to warm up to him hates him. In your mind, you almost killed a man who’s the only one that thinks highly of you.”

Genji shoots Angela a skeptical look. “Since when are you a therapist? You think Fraiser is peak comedy.”

“Believe me, I have no idea what I’m saying. But I’m the only woman who has a close relationship with any of you fucks. Then you all feel the need to dump on me.” The look she gives him is flat.

Genji feels sheepish at that. “Sorry.”

“No, your stuff I don’t mind being dumped. It’s when you bring other things to me that it starts being a problem. If you don’t do this for McCree, then do it for me. Talk to him.”

“I’ll think about it.” Genji shrugs.

Angela grips his chin in her hands. “Genji. Jesse thinks that you’re the best thing in the world. Fix things with him or you’ll both be miserable for no reason.”

He can’t argue with her.


	6. Charred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Genji you fuckign asshole" - My wonderful beta reader.

Genji stares at the Instagram account that shows on the screen in front of him. It’s filled with selfies of a tall woman with chin-length hair that’s dyed different bright colors in seemingly every other picture. Or it’s candids of Hanamura, but that’s not what he’s looking at.

 

Chinen Keiki, the bright haired girl, was Genji’s oldest friend. They’d known each other before they’d been able to come out to their families. In a better world she would have been his girlfriend, were she not the biggest lesbian he’d ever known. She’d always been down for a smoke or tearing up the town playing wingmen for eachother. With her soft brown hair and dark eyes she’d drawn girls like a magnet, and they would be able to mess around as much as they wanted. He’d checked up on her a few times, and all evidence of him had been deleted from her social media. No pictures, no posts mentioning him, nothing save for one post from five years ago that was an aesthetic-fueled picture. It was of her hands stained, buried in wet pink hair from when Genji had tried that color and made her apply it.

 

Who’d threatened her to remove him from her life? Odds are she was given the choice to die or comply, just like Genji. In her case she's more helpless than he's ever been. Keiki's mother has a habit of using her oldest daughter as a scapegoat when possible, after all.

 

Genji stares at that photo on his cheap smartphone for as long as it takes for his eyes to start hurting. She’s liked her own picture recently two weeks ago, meaning that she knows that this picture is the only thing she has left of him. So sentimental underneath her hard exterior. He misses her now, especially in the wake of his avoidance of Jesse.

 

He misses her dearly now. If she were here, she would be carving designs into his armor and talk about how much tail he’d get from the weird robot fetish crowd. She’d go toe to toe with him and tell him to stop being such a moody asshole and live a little. Maybe she could work on textile engineering and help make their uniforms. He closes his eyes and sighs at himself. God, he’s so pathetic. This longing is obviously coming from the lack of someone else in his life.

 

Keiki stings to think about, but Jesse is too fresh and painful to sting. It throbs with an icy rush of… not even a sensation. A lack of sensation, where what was once the barest shred of comfort is now a hollow cold emptiness.

 

Maybe he’s being dramatic. However this ache is different than the ache that Keiki left. Keiki was a comfort, Jesse was like a balm.

 

Angela is his confidant that he has no shame with, it’s impossible to be ashamed in front of her. She’s been wrist-deep in his insides trying to pick wires out of blood pools, there’s nothing to hide from her. Lena helps on the nights where he can’t shut his eyes without the nightmares that keep him from sleep.

 

Neither of them are Jesse.

 

_ I miss him _ , Genji thought with a pang, and he’d gone and avoided the man for two weeks so far.

 

Genji checked the clock on the inside of his visor, finding it to be a quarter past… shit, what was 22:15 in Military terms? Ten fifteen at night then.

 

Genji gets up before he can psyche himself out and gets dressed with a thrown-on hoodie that he stole from Reyes two weeks ago. He makes his way deeper into blackwatch before he can psyche himself out of this as well. His feet clicking in the metal floor echoes in the near-silent corridors. He stands in front of Jesse’s door and wonders if this will be worth it. Genji was once the master of navigating confrontation, but nothing has ever made him nervous like this.

 

He raises his hand that’s flesh and blood. One, two, three, four, the door swishes open before Genji can get the fifth one out. This isn’t his cybernetic arm, so it doesn’t stop before it hits Jesse’s chest.

 

Jesse looks thrilled, to Genji’s intense guilt. “Hey! Hey, uh… Genji.” Jesse says, and his smile falters to something unreadable. “Uh, what… why are you here?”

 

“I wanted to talk.” Genji answers.

 

Jesse takes a wordless step back in invitation. Genji’s been in Jesse’s room before. It’s better than Genji’s for sure, or maybe it just appears that way? It smells like cigarettes, greasy food wrappers, and Jesse’s cheap but pleasant cologne. The simple tiled floor is covered with jeans and Jesse’s dark clothing, most leading to an overstuffed hamper. That’s so him, Genji can imagine Jesse trying to aim for the basket but missing and not bothering to pick it up.

 

“Is that one of Gabe’s hoodies?”

 

“It was, but I had a… bodily… malfunction on it and Reyes told me to keep it.” That had been messy and disgusting and both him and Reyes promised to never speak of it again.

 

Jesse stuffs his hands in the pockets of his sweat pants. He looks messy, and Genji wonders if Jesse had been shirtless or naked before Genji knocked. “Well. What did you want to talk about?”

 

Genji hasn’t thought this far ahead. When in doubt, polite and tactful is the way to go for him. He looks away as he talks. “I  am sorry about how childish I have been since the incident while training. I am also sorry for how it has impacted our working environment. I have made a lot of trouble for everyone.”

 

There’s a beat of silence.

 

“Fuck you, Genji.”

 

Genji flinches. It takes a lot to surprise him like this. “What?”

 

“You heard me.” Jesse’s eyes, usually so warm and understanding, are like smoldering coals glaring daggers at him. “Is that all you have to say?”

 

Genji almost feels like cowering, but he knows that Jesse won’t ever hurt him. The instinct comes from darker places and black eyes earned for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. “I don’t know what else to say.”

 

“Jesus  _ Christ  _ Genji! You got my hopes up for this fuckin- impersonal shit?”

 

“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking-”

 

“No, ya don’t know, do you?” Jesse laughs, sharp and bitter to cut Genji off. “What was I s’possed to think, Genji?” Jesse throws his hands in the air. “Ya freak out and start shouting, you throw really fuckin’ sharp shit at me, and then ya fuck off doin’ god knows what, for two weeks and I ain’t seen a lick of you!”

 

Guilt twists in Genji’s stomach. “I need to-”

 

“Then ya do come back, ya blow Gabe off, and then straight up _ ignore _ me. I go to Angela and all she tells me is that you have doctor patient confidentiality and she ain’t tellin’ me a damn thing! I go to Lena and she tells me that you two just hang out with each other for fun and for a break from the heavy shit. I go to talk to you and you blow me off  _ again!” _

 

Jesse is on a roll. Genji keeps his mouth shut, letting Jesse rant. “Then the icing on the cake, ya come here to tell me that yer sorry for- what did you say?”

 

“For… impacting our work environment… negatively.” Genji is wincing at his own words.

 

“ _ Right _ .” Jesse’s voice is  dripping with hurt. “Ya come in here talking like that, what am I s’posed to think? Do you ever care about how hurt I am in any of this? Most of the time I don't know if you even like me, or if yer too nice to tell me to fuck off. But I think ya made it clear how you feel about our-”

 

Genji puts his hand up. “Stop.”

 

“Don’t fuckin’ tell me to stop you son of a bit-”

 

“JESSE.” Genji barks. The cowboy goes silent. Genji will warn Jesse not to insult his mother when he gets this cleared up. “You think that I do not like you.”

 

“You’ve never said otherwise.” Jesse’s lips purse.

 

“Jesse.” Genji begins, but words fail him. How the hell does he even begin to describe this? “I… well. I don’t have words that can describe it right.”

 

“Try me.” Jesse growls.

 

“I like you as much as you like me.” Genji tries.

 

Jesse looks away, breaking eye contact for the first time in this confrontation. His hands go to his pockets and Genji is sure his teeth are grinding together. “I think ya’ mean that. I don’t care about that.” He’s lying but Genji won’t point it out. “Did ya come here to make me feel bad?”

 

This is getting them nowhere. “Look. I owe you a few explanations and an apology. What do you want first?”

 

“Depends on what you’re trying to explain.”

 

“I’m trying to explain what about that situation triggered me, and the reason I’ve stayed away.”

 

“Start with the apology.”

 

“I am sorry that your feelings were hurt.” Genji says.

 

“Oh, wow,  _ fuck  _ you.” Jesse’s close to a shout now. “Really? That’s your apology? Sorry that my feelings are hurt? Not sorry for what  _ you  _ did, but sorry for what  _ I _ did. Is that it? You are starting to be a whole lotta’ heartache for me.”

 

Genji can feel himself getting defensive. “Jesse, there is no need to be dramatic.”

 

That’s the wrong thing to say. “Don’t fuckin’ tell me how to  _ feel _ Genji!” Jesse explodes, his accent so thick it’s hard to understand. “If I want to be dramatic then I’ll damn well be dramatic! At least I don’t avoid my problems for weeks at a time like you!”

 

Jesse when he’s angry is a sight to behold. It leaves Genji breathless. Directed at him, it’s a bad kind of breathless. He’s seen it directed at their enemies and the occasional person who calls Genji a freak or Jesse a dog or mongrel, but never at him. By his gods, what has he done?

 

“Let… let me try again.” He thinks hard for a moment, and manages to gather his thoughts. “I am sorry that I ran and avoided you instead of explaining what happened. That is my own personal failing and it is not fair to hurt you for something that is my fault.”

 

Jesse sighs and turns his back on Genji to take a few steps towards his messy bed, turning back around and flopping down on his back. Genji follows, perching on the edge of his desk so that Genji can still watch him. Jesse looks exhausted all of the sudden. Of all the people to be invested in, Jesse picked the worst.

 

“Apology considered.” Jesse says. God he can be petty when he wants to be but Genji deserves this. “Now what was with the freakout?”

 

“Ten months ago I was nearly sliced in half with a sword from behind.” Genji says. “I saw you behind me, holding a sword, and I thought it was my killer coming to finish me off.”

 

Jesse doesn’t say anything, so Genji keeps going. “You and Hanzo both have dark hair and it was dim enough that I couldn’t see your face.”

 

“Hanzo.” Jesse says. “That’s the man that did that to you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Please do not ask me to talk about it.”

 

“Look.” Jesse starts. “I get it. It fucked you up bad, you don’t like to think about it. But- don’t you trust me?”

 

“I hardly know you, Jesse.” Genji folds his arms. “And you hardly know me.”

 

Something in Jesse’s face sinks at that. Bitterness? Disappointment? Anger? Genji cannot for the life of him decipher what is going on in Jesse’s head right now. “I’d tell you anything you’d ask me.”

 

Genji’s lips purse. “Hanzo was my older brother, he killed me because he was told to by the elders of the Shimada clan. You’re now one of four people who know. Never ask me about it, never talk to me about it. Please.”

 

“Christ.” Jesse says under his breath.

 

Genji rolls his eyes. At least Jesse isn’t asking questions, or looking at him with pity. If anything Jesse looks angrier than before. “Let’s move on.”

 

“Alright. So why’d you run?”

 

“I was ashamed, and scared of myself, scared of what you would think of me.” Genji swallows. In Reyes’ hoodie while in Jesse’s room, he feels small and more human than he’s felt in months.

 

Jesse scrubs a hand across his face. “Okay. So I think we have a lot to talk about. And… you know you don’t have to be ashamed of anything around me. I think yer fucked up but who ain’t? Ya’ got dealt a shit hand and yer makin’ the best of it.”

 

Genji shrugs one shoulder. “I believe you. I… don’t mind talking this out” If he has to spend all night to try and get him and Jesse on good terms again then so be it. Jesse is worth it.


	7. Hearth

It’s a rare occurrence that Jesse is the one to come to Genji late at night. It’s easy to forget that Jesse is human, more human than Genji was before he was locked in this metal cage. It's clear that something is punishing Jesse the way that Genji is sure that his life right now is a punishment.

 

In the few weeks since that one long talk, Genji has been trying his best to do as much as possible to make sure that he doesn’t hurt him. Sometimes it feels like walking on eggshells -an idiom that Jesse himself taught Genji- in a way that Genji’s never experienced. It makes things easier and also harder in a complex way that he's not familiar with. If that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

 

“Sorry.” Jesse says. It’s the first word he’s said all night.

 

“I do not need to sleep.” Genji says, his voice scratchy and light without the alter on it. It’s late enough that he’s free of most of his dress-up. Wires and glowing ports exposed from armor peeled off, the fins at the top of his head popped off, and his head coverings on the other side of the room. A grand total of five people have seen him like this, Jesse counted. Three, if one didn’t count Angela’s two nurses.

 

He puts down a card. It’s a six. Jesse has a ten and takes the cards. War is one of the few card games Genji can play fair at. It’s only chance. Playing the others makes it unfair, as so many have told him when he uses his superior speed at slapjack. Also the hand-shaped bruise right on top of Commander Amari’s hand from that particular game had raised eyebrows.

 

Jesse scrubs a hand over his face. He’s winning and usually a very bad winner, but tonight he looks tired. “Still, sorry.”

 

“You are forgiven, and free to stay as long as-” Genji’s voice cracks and gives out, leaving the rest of his sentence to trail off into a painful wheeze.

 

“Genj-”

 

He puts his hand up. “No, it is fine. It happens sometimes. You can stay.”

 

Jesse lets out a sigh. “Christ, Genji. I like the sound of your voice as is but if it hurts you then go ahead and put your other voice on.”

 

“You are the corniest motherfucker I have ever met.” Genji is almost sure that corny meant what he wanted it to mean.

 

“And  _ you’re  _ the densest sonofabitch I’ve ever seen.” Jesse grumbles, but Genji can tell that it’s cheered Jesse up the smallest bit. He’s odd like that, appreciating Genji being shitty instead of polite. It makes him wonder…

 

Well, why not ask. “Why does that make you happy?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Me being a ‘son of a bitch’ as you say.” Genji hasn’t bothered telling Jesse to lay off of that. If Jesse can handle Genji at his worst then Genji can withstand an insult to his mother.

 

Jesse takes a moment to think, and in that moment takes another two rounds of cards before Genji can even get one. “I dunno. You being an asshole feels more genuine than polite. It's nicer when you're just you.”

 

“I used to be quite the extrovert back home.” Genji won a round of cards, but Jesse looked like he would be the winner regardless. “However Japan is very different from America. Polite is the default.”

 

Jesse rests his head on his fist. Genji watches his face as he does so. Jesse looks tired, more tired than Genji thinks he’s ever seen him. His stubble has grown out farther, it catches the light in light yellow sunshine-like lines from Genji’s desk lamp that’s the only thing illuminating the room. His lips are pulled down into a tired frown, and faint circles line under his eyes. Genji’s own eyes flick up, meeting Jesse’s in a very oddly charged stare.

 

“You’re upset about something.” Genji concludes.

 

Jesse sighs. “Yeah, I guess I am.” Jesse’s eyes narrow at him in a way that Genji is sure is suspicion. “I wasn’t trying to let you know.”

 

Genji rolls his eyes. “What is bothering you?”

 

“Lotta things.” Jesse shrugs.

 

“You might let me get away with being evasive, but that will not work with me. What is bothering you? Did someone say something about you?” Genji’s already formulating plans to steal some of Lena’s paint to make someone pay for hurting Jesse.

 

Jesse’s eyes go wide. “No! No, Genji, I swear if you strangle someone for me again I ain’t gonna defend you to Reyes.”

 

“That was  _ one  _ time, and he insulted me too!” Genji is getting defensive, he needs to shut that down before he kicks Jesse out in a fit of anger. “He had it coming for a while. You are avoiding the question.”

 

Jesse lets out a gusty sigh, the card game forgotten between them. “I don’t know, alright! I’ve just been in a real fuckin’ low mood all day, and I don’t  _ know _ why the hell I’m so testy. I almost bit off someone’s head for spillin’ coffee on my shirt. I ended up pulling a muscle ‘cause I wouldn’t let myself rest after training. I’m- I dunno, feeling like my old self and that ain’t a thing I wanna be feelin’ like.”

 

This is the first time that Jesse’s spoken of those days. He still wears the belt, even though it’s old and dented he still cleans it and wears it like there’s no problem. Jesse also has that handsome tattoo on his arm that Genji tries to not stare at. For one, it’s rude, and for another Genji has an  _ extreme  _ weakness for tattoos and it would be doubly rude to drool over it. He can imagine how a younger version of him would have taken that arm and traced his tongue over it. Mmm...

 

His thoughts are getting off track in a very bad way. Back on track, back on track! “You do not talk about that much. Deadlock, yes?”

 

Jesse’s eyes drop. “Yeah, that’s the old gang I used to be a part of. Weapon smuggling, drug trafficking, and terrorizing places when we’d show up in our motorcycles.”

 

_ Motorcycles.  _ Genji thinks that the old version of Jesse must have been more of a dreamboat than he is now. He does not say that out loud.

 

Jesse quirks an eyebrow at him. “What an expression, you know you’re an open book with your gear off.”

 

Genji looks away. “That doesn’t matter, go on.”

 

“We  _ are  _ going back to that later.” Jesse says. “But… yeah, deadlock. It wasn’t all bad. I could eat, get a gangbanger on my arm every so often, people respected me. I just… wasn’t a good person. I did a lot of shitty stuff only ‘cause I could, and worse if someone crossed me. I don’t like how easy it is to slip back into that skin.”

 

Genji stays silent for a few moments, letting Jesse ramble some more. “Sometimes I miss it. I miss being able to get people to do what I want with a flick of my hand. I miss the constant rush of outsmarting the law. I  _ really  _ miss the freedom. What’s that say about me if I let the worst parts of me come out when I least need ‘em.”

 

“What parts are those?” Genji doesn’t know what Jesse means, but also wants Jesse to keep talking.

 

“Oh, it's like… my temper is the worst. The way I sometimes say whatever bullshit’s on my mind without caring what it makes of me. Or how I sometimes want to hit someone for makin’ me angry and solvin’ a problem with my fists. Sometimes I don’t know if I want a guy because I like him or if it’s because I want him to want me.” Jesse goes quiet after the last line, his eyes unfocusing.

 

Genji’s lips press together, frowning in contemplation. “Hear me out.”

 

“Hun, I’d listen to anything you’d say.” Jesse’s voice is loaded with some kind of emotion Genji can’t even begin to try to understand. For how open he is, Jesse is truly hard to understand sometimes.

 

“When you are angry you always say what you mean, rather than what will hurt the person you are angry at. You are open and honest and that is more of a good thing than a bad thing. This is a violent environment where we are trained to react to obstacles with violence, that isn’t only you. I can not say much on how you want men, but from what I’ve seen any man would be lucky to have your interest.”

 

Jesse’s eyes look shiny with overwhelming emotion, but Genji won’t call it out. It’s better to let a man have tears in peace than to bring attention if the one is trying to hide it. “You’ve got quite a way with words, Genji.”

 

The cyborg shrugs. “You are possibly the best man that I have met in all my time here. Whatever it was that you used to be, you are not that now. I could go on about what I like about you, but that would break my reputation of being a ‘dense sonofabitch’ and I can’t have that.”

 

“Who’d believe me if I told ‘em?” Jesse raises an eyebrow.

 

“No one, but it can’t hurt to be careful. Also so you know, I am not dense. I’m the most perceptive person I know. I might not be able to deal with what I know, but I can pick up on most anything.” Genji frowns as Jesse resumes the card game, eager to win now that his mood is somewhat uplifted.

 

“I’ll bet you five hundred bucks that I can make you eat your words.”

 

“Is that an idiom?”

 

“Oh, uh, yeah. I means I’ll make you have to take back what you said.”

 

“How much is five hundred dollars in euro?”

 

“About four hundred and twenty five.”

 

“Deal.” Genji sighs as Jesse takes the last of the cards. “But it can’t be something small or petty. Everyone makes those tiny mistakes.”

 

“Trust me, once I win you’ll know it ain’t small.” Jesse folds the cards together in a quick shuffle. “Round five? Maybe you can make a comeback.”


	8. Flicker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: gore, body horror, and some trans issues that are to do with being closeted.  
> ~  
> "YAINT"- my wonderful beta reader.

His nightmares are numerous, but there are constant themes. Hanzo, Genji, and death, all in a swirl that makes him sick to think about during the day.

Most of them start the same.

Genji kneeling in front of the family shrine. The edges are sharp and bright, hurting to look at. He hasn’t slept in three days, torn with grief over his father’s death. His father’s boy to the end, even if Genji wasn’t ever a good son. A bad son, an awful person, and a disgrace to the family. Hanzo watches and is shrouded with cold and emptiness, watching Genji cry in front of their father’s sword. 

The majority of his dreams go like this:

Genji is accepting. These are dreams where Genji doesn’t resist or drip poison, and the dreams are crystal clear. He takes the offered blade and does it himself while staring Hanzo in the eyes. His dragons leave him in his last exhale, exploding from him in such a way that it tears Hanzo up as well. Two brothers killed in acceptance of each other, hatred set aside in a moment of mutual destruction. Those are the dreams that wake him up after a full night of rest, that short moment somehow stretching to cover those six or seven hours.

Some of them go like this:

_ I hate you.  _ Genji says to break the silence, cutting into Hanzo with his words. It’s the first thing Genji says. Or was it? There was a conversation before this, but he cannot remember it. All he remembers is the thick green pouring from Genji’s mouth as he chokes out the words. Like a man possessed with his body already dripping with blood.  _ I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I wish that I could have died instead of him so that I wouldn’t be left with people who want me gone! _

Genji thought himself hated by all, disgusting his flesh and blood and only tolerated through his father’s love. Thinking his brother’s love for him withered by something out of his control. He didn’t understand, couldn’t understand what drove Hanzo to do this. 

He surprises Hanzo, somehow. Genji sneers at being told his fate. _ It’s to be expected from the elders, the ones who gave you that old man name. _ The younger Shimada laughs again, harsh and ugly with a painful sounding rasp.  _ In a few decades you’ll be right up there. And I’ll bet you’ll be silent when they call me by my birth name.  _

Everything’s green and painful and poisonous, clouding in between the two of them, poisoning the two brothers like the years of resentment becoming physical. Genji is rotting from the inside out, his skin turning the sickly blue-white-green pallor of a corpse. Clotted blood pours from a thick line cutting across Genji’s chest.

_ Kill me yourself you fucking pussy.  _ Genji hisses, and falls apart in two directions, one way forward and one way backward, nearly sliced in half by Hanzo’s shaky hand. 

Other dreams go like this:

Sometimes Genji is the one being buried, trapped under layers of earth with the color drained out of his skin. The funeral is respectful. His hair is dyed back to black before the funeral, making him into the image of what the clan wants. Kind words are said over him, and Sojiro cries openly in a way no one has ever seen.

How he dies is not important. Poisoning, murder, assassination, a gunshot late at night. Still by Hanzo’s hand, still because of the shame to his family. For once Sojiro’s protection is not enough. This time his death is fast and peaceful and there is a body to bury back home. Genji’s body feeds the family cemetery and Hanzo rots from the inside out from above, eternally bent in grief and self hatred. 

Always this, was there no way for him to be ignored and pushed to the side? Pampered by Sojiro and scorned by the others and seeking his own thrills until he eventually finds someone to marry and hopefully bring more Shimada into the name. There’s never a dream where Genji is happy. He wishes that would happen, even though it hurts his heart more to think about than any damned dream could do to him. 

He would give anything for those disturbing gorey dreams, because tonight’s nightmare goes like this:

Genji is whole and in place, but it’s not him. It’s a twisted creature of his head, going by a name that both brothers have scrubbed from their minds and forbidden from their tongues. On the arm of a plain but rich man five years Genji’s senior who makes Genji uncomfortable with every other word. But father wished it to be so, and so Genji will hold to it now that the man is dead. Hanzo puts a hand on this person’s shoulder, so close and yet somehow worlds apart. 

This Genji never loved Hanzo. Hanzo never loved this person, either. They never confided in each other. The name Genji itself never crosses their minds, always  _ that  _ name. Doomed to be forever unhappy and locked away with father’s wishes holding the key. 

“Brother.” This fake Genji says with a hollow smile. It echoes through his head, getting smaller and quieter until there’s nothing left but a thick silence.

It leaves the man sweating and trembling in his bed. Terrified to the point of being sick, paranoid that if he creeps into another room on silent feet he’ll see that creature staring back at him. But no, the hallways are empty. Of course they are, they’re just nightmares. Nightmares that plague him day after day as the months crawl by. Will it really be a year, in only a few weeks? When that hot sticky summer day comes around and he’ll still see blood under his fingernails where there is none?

He needs some air. A part of him wonders if smoking might clear his mind, but he won’t be indulging in the impulse. What a weak thing that would be after all this time after how much he’s been trying to quit. His feet find regular paths through the area he’s known all his life, his bare feet making hardly a creak. The man’s hand lands on a doorframe, narrowly avoiding stubbing his toe in the dark. Always that same doorframe as well. Some things never change. 

He finds an area that no one at this hour would be in. No one would stop him regardless, he’s got the reputation and a legendary temper to keep anyone from crossing him or displeasing him. The only people who can ask him for his time are fast asleep, just like he should be. 

The balcony is quiet and peaceful as the man makes his escape there. The night air is sticky with a clammy humidity yet to be burned off by the sun. What time is it? He can’t tell, time slips away faster and faster. Nothing remarkable happens to mark the passage of time these days.

Hanzo exhales slowly, exhausted with himself. That’s something he misses most about Genji, he thinks. For all the trouble his brother caused all of them, he wishes that the excitement could have been around. What is he without Genji to clean up after and tend to, after all? What is Hanzo without Genji? Unable to get a good night’s sleep, and hardly able to deal with himself. Cruel and mean and always looking for something to occupy his time. 

His dragons hardly respond to him, these days. Always just below the surface, boiling on his skin so much that it hurts to touch his tattoo. They must resent him for killing Genji, and Genji’s own dragon.

Hanzo leans against the railing of the balcony, watching the treetops sway before him in the sticky hardly-there breeze of this late night. 

He thinks on his nightmare. What on earth could ever make his head conjure up that awful reality where Genji never transitioned and had to live his life presented as a woman? It makes him feel sick. No matter their differences or their change in relationship, Hanzo had treasured that Genji once upon a time trusted him enough to tell him about that. Genji, the name, was the one that Hanzo liked best out of the list that his brother made of names he wanted to be called by. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of what might have happened if Hanzo let himself resent Genji from a young age. Perhaps it’s his head wanting to punish him for what he’s done. 

Maybe his more paranoid elders are correct and the one killing their distant relatives is a specter. A curse that’s finally destroying them from the inside out, starting with the most distant cousins and aunts and second-uncles. Never on the side of Hanzo’s mother. If anything, they’re safer than anyone. There’s an awful thought that Hanzo refuses to even acknowledge. To entertain it would be torture. 

_ Red and black, with eyes like fire and the power of ten men.  _ If it’s going to come for him, it has a long time to go. Hanzo hopes that it picks up the pace. Either to kill him or to settle this once and for all.

In the morning when the daylight heats the world and makes Hanzo more lucid, he’ll go back to hating Genji just as much as he hates himself. He’ll think about all the reasons Genji deserved what happened and had it coming. Hanzo will think about all the times that he’s had to pay for his little brother’s mistakes right up to having to punish Genji himself. He’ll justify and he’ll feel right. He’ll do his work and he’ll do right by his family.

But at night when he’s asleep he knows better and he can let the guilt and grief destroy him. He’ll shape it back together and ignore the deeper cracks. Just as things are supposed to be.

Across the world, Genji has other things on his mind. 

Save for times when emotions run high, Genji is not free with his touch. He allows people to be touchy with him but he does not instigate. 

Angela has to touch him, and her touch is normally sterile and chilly, with fingers cold from handling medical steel and cold solutions all day. Her touch brings soothing comfort in the times when it’s correcting something gone wrong in his body, and she’ll hold his human hand in hers while talking with him to make sure he responds. Her touch has to be permitted. 

He’ll tolerate a pat on the shoulder from Reyes and little else. A part of him wonders if this is what Reyes was like when Jesse first joined. All business with a bit of encouragement and endless patience with no tolerance for backtalk. He’ll find out soon enough if Reyes tries harder to get Genji to warm up to him, but so far it’s been cool and professional with the kind of touch that Genji expects from americans.

His thoughts keep running in circles, trying to distract from the distress signals that keep going off on the inside of his visor. Yes, of course he knows that there’s something wrong with his body! Having to shut it off over and over again was getting irritating.

Jesse he didn’t quite want to think about. Not with the predicament they were in, with Genji’s lower legs destroyed and plastered against Jesse’s back and the cowboy had to take himself and Genji’s body back to the rendezvous. The last person to give Genji a piggyback ride had been-  _ no.  _

Genji’s teeth ground together. He would  _ not  _ let himself think kindly of his murderer, no matter how happy or bittersweet the memory.

Jesse seemed to not have a care in the world. Walking with an easy gait, and humming through song after song. Genji only catches the end of one of them that Jesse’s singing out loud, as if he isn’t walking down an abandoned road at night in Latvia after hardly escaping with their lives.

“If you see me comin', better step aside   
A lot of men didn't, and a lot of men died   
With one fist of iron, and the other of steel   
If the right one don't get you then the left one will   
  
You load sixteen tons, what do you get   
Another day older and deeper in debt   
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go   
I owe my soul to the company store” 

Jesse’s voice is thick and low, raspy with his smoking habit and like red-hot gravel, tumbling hot and rough over Genji’s senses. The way he can feel the vibration of Jesse’s voice makes Genji want to creep his hands higher and cup around his throat to feel it better and soak it in. Needless to say, he keeps the urge at bay. It would be impolite to do so, and hard to explain. That seems to be Genji’s curse around Jesse. He doesn’t know how to be fond of someone without being attracted to them, so obviously the solution is to not act on anything. Especially while his mostly-unharmed friend is carrying his damaged body 15 kilometers into the middle of nowhere so Reyes could pick their asses up. The last thing he needs to do is give in to old habits.

“You do not seem to be having a bad time.” Genji grumbles into Jesse’s ear where his head is resting on Jesse’s shoulder. 

“Can’t hear ya’ through the static, Genji.” Jesse says. “You’re right next to my ear.”

“I said you do not seem to be having a bad time.” Genji repeated himself, louder. If he wasn’t clear then the voice synthesizer couldn’t sync up his words properly. 

“You’re a lot lighter than ya’ look.” Jesse said. “I could carry another you before it slows me down, ‘s long as I take it easy. Hike your arms up a little, I think you’re slippin’.” 

Genji holds on tight as Jesse shifts his hands so they’re holding firmer to the remains of Genji’s legs. If he had the rest of his lower limbs then he’d have a better hold and Jesse wouldn’t have to grip Genji’s thighs so hard. His hands can’t reach all the way around, making it harder to hold onto him. “There we go.” Genji ignores the way he can feel the man’s strong fingers dig into the synthetic muscle of his thigh. 

Genji remains silent for a while, and Jesse sings through another song, but this one is in spanish and Genji can’t even begin to pick the words out, but it sounds playful and fun. 

“Are you sure this does not bother you?” Genji asks into Jesse’s ear, clearer than before so he doesn’t have to repeat himself. 

“Nah.” Jesse says. “What, you don’t trust me to get you back in one piece?”

_ I could trust you with anything and I don’t think you’d fail me _ , Genji thinks with a surprising amount of clarity.

With how much Genji’s hurt him, Genji is lucky that Jesse hasn’t gotten smarter and tossed him away like a smart man should do. He wants to crowd closer to that, selfishly dig his fingers in and keep that comfort close. But he can not, Jesse is a free spirit and a free man and a  _ good  _ man and Genji doesn’t deserve a moment of his time. Jesse gives it anyways, his wonderful cowboy with a heart of gold. 

“Genji?”

“I trust you.” Genji sighs. “I can’t believe that they got my legs. Both of them. Thankfully I am not human anym-”

“You mean thank god y’aint got organic legs.” Jesse corrects him. 

Ah, yes.  _ That _ . It would be irritating if it wasn’t so nice of him. “Did Angela put you up to this campaign of assuring my humanity, or did you come up with that by yourself?”

“A little of both.” Jesse laughs, and Genji can feel the movement of his chest under his fingers and the ringing vibration through where his visor is pressed so the column of his throat. He has such a nice laugh. 

He knows that he worries Angela and Jesse both. Angela had to be the one to scrape him together in the beginning, and she still has difficulty getting him to promise not to destroy himself further. It makes her job harder, and it hurts her when he does this. Jesse… Genji isn’t so sure about. Of course Jesse gets worried when Genji is hurt. That’s the kind of man he is, worried for friends, but Genji is a lost cause. 

He worries himself, as well. Worries that if he doesn’t pace himself then he won’t get to complete his mission. Hanzo dead, the Shimada a name people whisper about with a warning on their lips, and his own name forgotten and scrubbed from the world. He wonders what they call him, this figure that is taking them down brick by brick. Did Hanzo feel the same empty satisfaction Genji feels when he’s scrubbing the blood of his kin out from under his nails? 

He can’t die before he gets his revenge. But there’s always a chance...

Genji presses his fingers into the meat of Jesse’s sides and listens to Jesse’s breath catch. “I need you to do me a favor.”

Jesse’s breath eases, but Genji can feel the stutter of Jesse’s heartbeat at the serious turn of conversation. “Genji, you know I like ‘ya, but I am carrying you back to base while you ain’t got any legs. What else could you want?”

“Hanzo Shimada. Three years older than me, stockier, we’d be of a height now. He has a full sleeve tattoo that goes up to his left arm to his left pec. Darker eyes, black hair, thick eyebrows like me.” It hurts to say, the words taste like blood in his mouth. “If I die before I get to do it, I want you to kill him for me.”

Jesse’s deadly silent and Genji settles his head solidly on his cowboy’s shoulder to wait for a response. 

What would Jesse even be thinking at a time like this? He’s likely thinking of how to let Genji down easy, to tell him that Genji’s battles aren’t his. It’s well within his right to say no. Genji has been plenty of trouble for Jesse so far. Pitting his brother and his cowboy against each other, one of them would be dead by the end. Jesse likely knows how dangerous the Shimada is by now, he doesn’t have to do something like that for him.

“I’ll do it,” Jesse says. “but you gotta do me a favor first.”

Genji nods against Jesse’s back. “Name it.” The rhythmic rise and fall of his chest feel so good, so close, and the way it levels out as Jesse thinks about what he wants to say is so telling. Every single part of him is so expressive, it’s incredible. 

“If you die doin’ something reckless I won’t go through with it. You gotta try to live before I’ll do your dirty work.” Jesse’s voice is serious, a deep vibrating rumble. 

Genji snorts into Jesse’s neck where his visor is pressed. His sentimental cowboy, of course, he would ask for that “You ask a high price.”

“Your price is a hell of a lot higher than mine, Genji.”

That’s fair. “We have a deal then.” Genji laughs against Jesse’s shoulder. “Ah, look at us. We’re both such a mess.”


	9. Ashes

_ “Jesse James McCree _ ” read the title of the medical record.

A twenty-five-year-old man. The medical records he was skimming through went back seven or eight years. So been a part of it since he was a teenager, how odd. Nationality was American, that would be interesting. Americans always were.

Genji skipped over ethnicity after giving it a basic glance. What was a navajo? And what was the difference between a hispanic and a latin american? Genji didn’t know, and didn’t care enough to want to know. Brown eyes, brown hair, 6’1”, other physical characteristics were listed along with his blood type. A note was made in the corner of the paper in German. Something to do with smoking and habits.

Was the man a smoker? How gross, Genji thought, rather hypocritical of him since he indulged in cigarettes every once in awhile. His own lungs inhaled and exhaled without his thinking, hooked up to this ginormous life support machine as he was. The rest of the files were incident reports with a large amount in the beginning. The incidents slowed down until there were only one or two in the last year.

“I could get in trouble for you looking at my files.” Ziegler grumbled at him and swiped the paper out of his hands.

“I will say that your ethics were bugging me and take the blame.” Genji grumbled. “Who is it hurting?”

“McCree, maybe, if you get into his business like this.”

“I do not care about one agent, but I want to know about these people.”

“ _ Genji.” _

Genji’s eyes darted up to meet his doctor’s, artificial red meeting clear blue. She looked awful, with circles under her eyes and stress pimples crowding in patches around her hairline. Despite all this, her eyes were sharp and calculative as ever. He didn’t shudder, he’d yet to train his body to natural responses again, but if he could then he would. He remembered with a too-clear memory how only two months ago he had watched those eyes trained on his body. The way she picking him apart and putting him back together. Narcotics not taken into account his drug history, leaving him ever so slightly aware as he was made into this awful miracle.

He looked away. He didn’t blame her, but it made looking her in the eye hard.

“I mean it.” She said, ice in her voice.

Genji narrowed his eyes at her. “I want to know about the sharks I am being thrown to.”

“You can ask me, Shimada.” She sighed at him and plunged two of the tubes on his arms into the ports of the machine he was sitting on. “Where did you even get this?”

“I found it.” was all Genji said.

Ziegler rolled her eyes at him. “McCree isn’t who you should worry about. Reyes is who you’ll be working under.”

“I could not find his records, or I would be looking at that instead.” He leaned back into the machine that had been his place of rest for the past months. He’d be getting his own room a few days from now. He reached with his mechanical hand to pluck at the tubes jammed into his chest, popping them free from pumping air into his lungs. Ziegler didn’t scold him for it, so he assumed it was permitted.

Ziegler pushed a few buttons and Genji’s arm tingled from where fluid was being pulled out. Dialysis with a twist, she told him. Since he only had half of his flesh and blood body still intact, it took less time and effort to siphon his blood out and put it back in.

“Fine.” Genji said. “Tell me about Reyes.”

Ziegler hummed at his request. “He’s a good man. Bitter, but he makes a good pot of coffee.” She smiled. “He once told Morrison to fuck off for me. He called dibs on you when he found out Morrison’s plans as well.”

“Are they enemies?” Genji asked with a tilt of his head.

Ziegler’s eyes tightened and she had a sad smile on her face as she spoke next. “I shouldn’t gossip about bad blood.” She unhooked the tubes. “Genji, you know that I like you.”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

Ziegler gave him a soft look. Pity, affection, and worry filled every line of her face. He liked her too in a way. In another life he would have loved her madly, but this is no time or place for those kinds of feelings. He’d hated her in the beginning, but it was hard to hate her after she was wrist-deep in his stomach to save him from a malfunction. Having to watch her weep over scrubbing the blood out from under her fingernails had sold it. He could never hate her.

“Yes.” He said firmer. “I appreciate you too. Why do you ask?”

Ziegler wrapped her fingers around his, warm and damp in the way her hands always were when she took her gloves off. “Don’t send anyone to me on your first day, alright?’

He closed his eyes. “Fine.”

She carefully set a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back to look into her eyes. “Promise?”

“I promise.” He nodded at her.

“Good.” She smiled and went about unhooking him from the rest of the machines.

He hated being separated from the machines. When hooked up he felt warm, as his mechanical parts were at full power. Then the power would start to conserve, and Genji would go back to feeling like a cold faulty machine. “Thank you.” He said to Angela. Angela or Ziegler? He wasn’t sure yet how he would address her, despite the months spent with her. “Tell me the directions to the Blackwatch training grounds?”

“Down three levels on the private elevator. There’s four hallways, you’ll want to go down the one to your immediate right. Then there’s Hallway K. You'll want to go down that one and it’ll be the sixteenth door on the right. There’s a great big gash in the wall, it’s near that.” She patted his shoulder and squeezed for a second before letting go.

For a second, Genji considered reaching into his chassis, grabbing whatever he could, and yanking. It would be painful beyond words and cause Angela a solid few days of work, but it would keep him from having to leave the medical wing. This was all he’d known for the past months and the thought of leaving it was… terrifying. Terrifying and daunting in a way that Genji never wanted to face.

He liked Angela more than he feared this, he decided.

The private elevator smelled like bleach and disinfectant. It contrasted with the stains on the linoleum that might have been old blood, older coffee, or perhaps bloody vomit. For being so elete, Angela had warned him how Blackwatch wasn’t as funded as the pristine aboveground.

How odd for him to be in it, considering Genji alone cost the organization roughly one and a half million euro. How much was that in yen?

Doing the math in his head was a sound distraction. He’d always learned to overestimate when converting currency. Better to have too much than too little. Even though he knew that one euro was closer to 130 yen, he’d round up to 140 for generosity.  _ Person approaching, 15 meters away.  _ He ignored the little alert, the same way he’d been doing since it was installed.

140 times 1.5 million, then.  _ 10 meters away.  _ That was basically 14 times 15 with seven zeroes? No, that would be if it were fifteen million. Six zeroes then, which would be like 15 million times 14. That was 30 times 7. Or 60 times 3 plus 30.

_ Five meters away.  _ 60 times 3 would be 180, plus 30 would be 210. Plus six zeroes.... Genji cost them a little less than two hundred and ten million yen? Yikes.

“Howdy.”

Genji whirled around, coming face to face with… someone.

For a split second, Genji felt the corners of his mouth perk up, and his eyes shift to become interested and speculative. The moment he became aware of it he slammed that down.

The instinct had come from years of understanding people and his own interests. This wasn’t a man who knew his reputation and was looking for a few nights of fun. This wasn’t Japan or the ramen shop that doubled as a tourist trap that he could seduce people from. Especially not this tall, tan, dark-haired, and dark-eyed man. Even if the man was… interestingly dressed. A cowboy hat indoors, four stories underground? What a spectacle.

“Ain’t meanin’ to startle ‘ya.” The strange man said, eyes sweeping Genji up and down.

In the past, Genji would have welcomed the interest, but now he felt like a dissected animal trapped in a glass case for people to gape at. “Who are you?”

The man smiled, all Hollywood-white teeth. “Ah, my bad. I’m Jesse McCree.” The man said, putting a face to the name Genji learned earlier. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You must be Shimada.”

What he did next was what threw Genji off. The man took a step forward and clasped Genji’s flesh hand in his, and his other hand gripped his upper arm.

In a violent motion, Genji’s synthetic arm lashed out and slammed down on the hand gripping his arm to knock it off, and yanked the man closer. Genji’s unheld hand thumped onto the man’s chest and shoved him forward with all his might. The force ended up throwing him across the narrow hallway to slam against the wall with a loud metallic TWANG. It sounded painful even to Genji’s ears.

The man cursed. “What the- what was that for?”

“Put your hand on me again and I will dislocate every bone in your arm.” Genji said, his voice rasping with the synthetic synthesizer made to fill where his own voice lacked.

The man rubbed his sore shoulder. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice. You sure are a spitfire ain’t ya?”

Genji turned on his heel and kept walking in the direction Angela directed him towards earlier.

McCree followed him, and Genji could already tell that this man would be a bane on his existence. “The whole crew’s been wantin’ ta meet you, you know. Ha, ‘n by that I mean me ‘n Gabriel. That’d be Reyes to you, I figure. Ya’ve been keeping Angela all to yourself huh?”

_ My brother put me through a magical dragon wood chipper  _ would likely not be the thing to say to this man to get him to back off. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Aw come on sugar, don’t be like-”

Jesse was looking for some kind of violent outburst this time. He was surprisingly fast and moved out of the way of the gut-punch Genji was going for. His fist missed and landed with an awful sounding ring in the metal, leaving a dent. He was thankful it was his synthetic arm where the sensations didn’t register like pain.

“Okay, yain’t one for nicknames.” Jesse muttered. “I got it, I got it. I think we’re gettin’ off on the wrong foot.”

Genji was too prideful to ask what the fuck a “yain’t” is so instead he gives him an icy glare. “You would be smart to leave me alone.”

“That might be true, but we’ll be workin’ together ‘n I don’t wanna have someone hatin’ me on my own team.” Jesse’s voice was smooth and open with friendliness. “Am I right?”

Genji’s voice was flat as he answered. “No. Can you fuck off  _ now _ ?”

“Well, Shimada, we’re both going to the same place. So no.” McCree’s smile was sly now, and Genji tried his best to avoid it as they walked to their destination. He hoped that the rest of Blackwatch would not be as irritating as this man.


	10. Embers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "hey i hope u know i hate u and i started crying"- my wonderful beta
> 
> Warnings for mentions of: drugs, drinking, suicidal ideation, and death.

The margin of error kept cycling through Genji’s head. A little under one percent for his bionic arm at full capacity, but close to ten percent for his human arm. It means one side of his body is ten times more accurate than the other. It throws him off in a way that might kill him before he’s ready. He would fight the spirits himself if he died from a faulty sword swing.

He suggested to Angela that they augment the other arm. Until he got her to change her stance on that hard no he would have to work on it.

The training program he made himself was simple. Sturdy boards in the shape of humans to come one after another were his target. He would strike the blue ones with his human fist and the red ones with his inorganic fist. It was blissfully mind numbing to do something like this and warmed him in the way exercise had in the past.

He remembers a time he only ever did this to stay in a state of perfection. Working out for vanity and the sculpted body he’d desired the moment after his top surgery took up a year of his life. He’d loved himself then, all strong thick muscle that made his shoulders fill out. His thighs and waist always carried a touch of softness from the endless ramen and junk food he’d forever been tempted by. With the muscle underneath it there wasn’t a thing he disliked about himself.

That was such a good time. It was a time of bringing person after person to hotel rooms, fucked up and enjoying his body with other people. It was a time of designer drugs that left long blank stretches in his memory that lasted from hours to days at a time. What did it matter if it destroyed his mind? He was still whole and himself and the most divine thing most people had ever seen.

He misses it. He misses being beautiful and desired. He misses being able to masturbate with a hand that isn’t either his fumbling left hand or the awkward clinical way his right hand feels. Sometimes he wants to take that hand and claw all the wiring and silicone and metal out of him until he can mold himself into something else.

_ Thunk-crack. Thunk-crack. Thunk-crack.  _ One right after the other, never running out as the boards would repair themselves before coming back around. The results would be analyzed once he wore himself off in the small hours of the morning.

“That doesn’t get boring to you?”

Genji’s fist faltered at the next board. He frowned and turned away from the work. He would exclude the boards passing by, untouched and outliers. “You are still here?”

Genji had been at it since ten when sleep had not been able to claim him for more than an hour. Jesse was already there when he showed up, but now was sitting to the side, watching Genji work. “I timed you, ya know. It’s been an hour since you took a break.”

“Do you ever have anything better to do than be with me?” Genji asks.

“Ain’t nothin’ better than this.” Jesse says from his perch on the bleacher-like structure that allowed observers who aren’t in need of the bulletproof glass. He grabs something by his foot and tosses it. “Heads up.”

Genji catches the object. A water bottle? Well, it would be rude to turn it down, and he can never get enough water.  He pops the top off and drinks it down in two long pulls. “Thank you.”

“So do you even notice you’re tearing your hand up?” Jesse asks.

He glances down at his human hand. It’s not bad, he doesn’t bleed, but the skin bruises down to the bone and stings. He's removed from the pain in a way that isn't exactly healthy. “It is fine.”

“It really ain’t.” Jesse says. “Just- come over here and let me fix you up so we can both go to bed?”

It makes Genji feel guilty some of the time. Jesse devotes so much time and care to him, he can’t help but feel bad that he’s wasting his time so much. Genji is a lost cause. He's digging his own grave with gusto, waiting for something to finally kick down all the dirt and smother him. Jesse is an observer, watching it, but incapable--or refusing to see the dirt. If Jesse wants to pretend Genji is worth something then Genji won’t deny him it.

“Fine.” He says. Some nights he hates himself enough to let other people order him around. He’ll find something else to do when Jesse leaves. Perhaps working on cracking that encryption on his file that he found browsing through they base's database. He had to know what Morrison was hiding from everyone, but it can wait for some time.

Jesse leans back to snag one of the dozens of first aid kits in the training room. Ever since the time Genji lost his cool Jesse’s changed how he acts when Genji’s in training mode. He moves loud and heavy, letting Genji know where he is at all times.

Genji goes to sit in front of him, quiet and still lost in the swirling near-dissociative way that he does on nights when  _ death blood revenge worthless machine inhuman abomination  _ don’t let him take in a breath without wanting it to be his last. Jesse moves around him, kneeling down on the dirty floor to take Genji’s hand in both of his.

The position reminds him all too suddenly of one of his most painful memories.

It was two nights before his father died. Genji had to be pried away from his father’s bedside to eat, sleep, and shower, but in between those times he was there. Watching Sojiro waste away was a special kind of torture. Sojiro was far from a good man, a criminal boss who callously killed men for crossing him, but he was a  _ wonderful  _ father.

Hanzo had been the one to drag Genji away from Sojiro for the last time. When Genji’s father reached up to cup his face.

Sojiro reached up to cup his face, tender and loving in a way Genji hadn’t felt in years. “My sparrow.” Sojiro said. “Do not watch me die. Watch me live, and leave.”

It was one of the first sentences he said lucidly in days. “I can’t have you die alone.” Genji said. He’d always been an ugly crier, and was sure that Sojiro’s heart was breaking to see his son in such a state.

“I will not be alone.” Sojiro said in the same voice he used when Genji cried as a child. “I will see your mother soon. I live on in you, she lives on in you.” He dropped his hand and turned away from Genji. It was a dismissal and an order at the same time. Hanzo was the one to lead him out, the one to flinch when Genji wrenched his shoulder away from Hanzo’s hand.

For a moment Hanzo and McCree were the same, both extending an uneasy hand to him as he was in need. He had shoved Hanzo’s hand away from him then. He ran where no one could find him, missing his father’s death and the following funeral. That time was a blur of the hardest drugs he could get his hands on and enough booze to kill a man who wasn’t as hardy as Genji. He’d come back to his home ignorant of the noose snared around his neck and the death sentence waiting for him.

He thinks he might be crying, but Jesse isn’t shaken. He carefully applies a cool and sticky cream to his skinned knuckles and the bruises darkening at a rapid pace. He winds a bandage around Genji’s hand, careful and oh so considerate.

Jesse isn’t Hanzo. He could never be. Jesse helps Genji because he cares, not out of some idea of familial duty. He does it because he’s a good man, gold to the core, goodness oozing from every part of him. A part of him wants to collapse forward and cry into the man. Another part of him wants to get up and run until he’s whole and unbroken and free. They’re dangerous fantasies to get lost in.

“Spread your fingers for me, darlin.” Jesse says.

He remembers being young, peeking into his parents's room searching for comfort after a nightmare. How old is he? Four, five at the most he thinks. It’s before he’s old enough to be told to sleep in his own bed, which he remembers being a little before his sixth birthday. It’s an odd thing to remember but he lets the memory carry him away and Jesse winds the bandage around his torn up fingers.

He sees his father sitting on the bed he shares with Genji’s mother. She catches his eye and nods at him. He goes in, inching through the door to go and join them on the bed.

Sojiro’s eyes soften at the sight of his youngest child and allows Genji to crowd up to his uninjured side. He’s bleeding from a wound on the shoulder and Genji’s mother is tending to it. She probes the irritated flesh with a worrying coo under her breath. It's a distraction from her swiping a disinfectant-soaked cotton pad over the deep scratch, making Sojiro flinch. Genji watches her work from the confines of his father’s warmth where he’s tangled himself in the man’s sleeping robe.

“ _ Lift your arm up, my love _ .” She says to Sojiro. For a moment it’s only the two of them and Genji sees his mother’s eyes so full of love that it overwhelms his young heart.

Genji blinks and his mother’s hazy face goes away. He snaps back to attention as Jesse wraps the last of the bandages around his hand.

Jesse has nothing in common with his mother. She was subtle and calming, not like Jesse’s surefire approach to everything and tendency to rile people up. She was slight and soft, where Jesse is broad and heavy with muscle. There’s only one thing he has in common with her, and it’s that deep feeling in Jesse’s eyes that Genji had never been able to name.

_ Spirits help him, he loves me.  _ Genji thinks.

He’s never been struck by lightning before, but Genji is sure what’s going on in his brain is like that.

Jesse asking for Genji to keep trying to stay alive in exchange for killing Hanzo if he failed to do it was because Jesse loved him enough to want him alive. Jesse exposing his insecurities in vulnerable moments to Genji was because Jesse loved him enough to trust him. Jesse’s rage and anger at being ignored after a significant confrontation was the rage of heartbreak. Jesse’s patience in patching him up over and over again was a patience made from love.

A year and a half ago when Jesse came to comfort him on the rooftop is clear as a bell.  _ “Well, friend,” Jesse says. “I think you look good.” _

The silent “I love you” in those words feels like a burn.

In an ideal world, this is the moment Genji throws caution to the wind and pulls Jesse into a crushing kiss. They get lost in each other and Genji lets this obvious - _ so obvious how could he be so blind _ \- love wash over him. He tastes it on Jesse’s tongue and feels it in the grip of his desperate hands on Genji’s sides. Genji feels broken in the arms of someone who sees him as someone whole enough to love.

This is not an ideal world. Genji’s eyes roll back and he passes out from shock.


	11. Hazard

Genji remembers a time Jesse told him that Reyes means King in Spanish. Genji didn’t have the tongue for it, so he asked Morrison if that was true. He had it confirmed that the phrasing was true, and in his mind it was fitting. 

When Genji watches Reyes he thinks of the story of Atlas. A man who holds up the sky to keep it from crashing to earth, standing tall and refusing to buckle under the weight. Without Blackwatch to seal in the nasty parts of Overwatch the poison will leak out and the world will see that Overwatch isn’t all clean and heroic. That’s Reyes’ job to a T. He is the Atlas of Overwatch, mighty and incredible. 

His office does  _ not  _ reflect this. 

“Why is there a fake spider on your ceiling?” Genji asks, gesturing up at the decoration. The ceiling is draped in a black plastic spiderweb, with the aforementioned spider clinging to it.

“Halloween.” Reyes says. “Made it three years ago with Fareeha’s help. It was a science project to make an anatomical model of something in her sixth-grade science class. I use it as a decoration now. Apparently the rest of my stuff is a fire hazard as long as I allow smoking in here, so I have the spider.”

“Is Halloween not in October?”

“As far as I’m concerned, Halloween starts once the Fourth of July is over. Once it’s October I’ll break out all the other stuff.”

Genji remembers the American independence day that happened just under a month ago. Jesse had walked into their morning briefing wearing an American flag as a shirt and Genji took the day off. He likes Americans fine but they get too wild about their holidays. The spider isn’t the only thing that seems to be a contradiction according to the man. Sloppy drawings fill the walls while magazine clippings fill the rest of the space. It smells of Jesse’s cigars and leather polish, an odd and unpleasant combination.

“Coffee?” Reyes asks. 

Genji is beginning to regret coming to the commander with this problem. A month has passed since Genji passed out in Jesse’s arms. He came to seconds later and tried to play it off, only for Jesse to drag him to bed and demand he get a full night of sleep for once. Genji didn’t have the heart or mindset to fight him on it, not after realizing the man who’d been his friend for a year is in love with him. 

“Shimada.” Reyes says. 

Genji looks up. 

“I said do you want any coffee?”

Genji exhales quickly. “Ah, sure.”

“How do you take it?” He says. Genji wonders how many sleepless nights the old looking coffee pot has been complacent in. 

“No sugar, lots of cream.” Genji says. It’s one of the few things he can drink. Being on a clear-liquid diet with some exceptions means coffee, tea, and water are the only drinks he can enjoy. 

“You seem like a black coffee kind of guy.” Reyes says.

“I was.” Genji says. “Until I found myself on the receiving end of a mug of straight soy sauce.”

Reyes cracks a smile at that. “How’d that happen?”

Genji swallows. “My brother had a very big sweet tooth, but I have always liked savory stuff better. I made fun of his sugar coffee so he gave me a mug of hot soy sauce. I took a sip, composed myself, and drank the whole thing.”

“I would have thrown up.”

“I  _ did  _ throw up. Worst throat ache of my life, but it was a good prank so I couldn’t be mad. I started putting cream in my coffee so I couldn’t be fooled again.”

“Here.” Reyes hands over a hot mug that Genji clutches in his human hand. It’s awkward, he was right handed before this, but he’s almost used to it after more than a year of having no choice. “Did you come here for a reason, or did you want company?”

Genji is starting to see why Jesse slips up and calls Reyes ‘Pops’ so often. When not barking orders and in this homey office Reyes seems like a fatherly type. Genji already had a father, he wasn’t lacking anything like Jesse was, but he can see the appeal in trusting this man as much as Jesse does. 

Genji takes a sip from his coffee. “Can you tell me the protocol of romantic relationships among our ranks?”

Reyes snorts. “Ah, I got it."

Genji is sure that he does not, but he waits as Reyes goes on. “It depends. People from different areas can date freely. If Angela were to start dating Tracer, or I were to be involved with someone from Overwatch, it would be fine.”

Reyes is many things, but before anything else he is safe. Genji can’t force himself to open up to the man but he can be relaxed. He remembers the time he had a bodily malfunction early on, and had thrown up a heady mixture of blood, bile, and about fifteen percent of the lining of his stomach right on the man’s front. Reyes had calmly laid Genji on his side and given Genji the hoodie he was wearing to spare the carpet of Angela’s office they’d been talking in. Genji could trust Reyes, he was sure. 

Might as well cut to the chase. “I think that McCree has amorous feelings for me.”

Reyes nods at him, not phased at all. “That’s what I thought this would be about. What made you come to me now?”

Genji glances down at his feet. So Reyes knows about it too. What a fool he must look. “I know what it means when he looks at me that way.”

Reyes blinks at him. “Yeah, but why now?”

“Well, I have been thinking about it seriously and I do not know what to do.” Genji rolls his shoulders. “I value his friendship and companionship but I feel as if I do not do something then I will be… leading him on.”

Reyes stares at him for a solid ten seconds of silence. “Genji.” He says. 

“Reyes.” Genji says back. 

“When… when did you first clue into this?”

“Around a month ago. Jesse was fixing me up and… it kind of clicked.”

Reyes sits back in his chair. “You stupid son of a bitch _. _ ” He grunts. 

Genji wonders if Jesse uses that phrasing when speaking about him, since it’s one of the cowboy’s favorite insults. He can picture that, Jesse groaning about him to Gabe while cursing up a storm.

Reyes keeps going. “He’s been in love with you for a year. He’s been crushing on you since the day you met!” Reyes waves his hand about. “This whole time I thought you knew and you weren’t interested. How the hell did you not pick up on this?”

Genji keeps his eyes on the ground. Bitterness rises up in him like the blood and bile of the first time they met face to face. “Yeah, how stupid of me. Thinking that  _ anyone  _ would love _ this _ .”

Reyes doesn’t hesitate. “Jesse isn’t that shallow. Just because you’re minus some and plus some doesn’t-”

“I’m  _ broken _ , Reyes.” Genji snaps. “I’m a broken toy that  _ Overwatch  _ is invested in. I live to destroy the people who destroyed me and either I’ll die doing that or Overwatch will put me down like a dog. You tell me how someone can love me!” He stands up, his voice breaking with a shout. “Give me one reason why I should think  _ anyone  _ would love  _ me _ .” Genji is not an angry crier, but by the spirits if he isn’t close.

Gabriel takes a deep breath and extends a hand to put on Genji’s shoulder. “Sit down Shimada, drink your coffee. Calm down. Let’s talk about this.”

The fight leaves Genji. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry for that.”

He sits down and Gabriel nudges his coffee at him again. Genji drinks and sighs at the warm liquid filling his mouth and then sliding down his throat. Besides killing his distant cousins and destroying his family empire bit by bit it feels like all he does is more and more motherfucking talking. 

“Let's start from the beginning.” Gabriel says. “Jesse is in love with you. You want to know what you should do.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want him back?”

Genji presses his lips together in thought. “In an ideal world he would likely be the kind of man to get me to commit to monogamy. Had you sent him in place of those other agents I think I would have eloped within a month.”

Gabriel smirks at him. “I didn’t send him on that mission on purpose. It would have been a disaster.”

The cyborg laughs a low, sad chuckle. “Ah, but this is not an ideal world is it? I don’t know what it’s like to be in love. I’ve only ever seen it in others. I think I’d start crying if I tried to sleep with him anyways, so I can’t go the whole seduce and then fall in love route.”

“Do you  _ want  _ to fall in love?” Gabriel asks. 

And isn’t that the million dollar question? “No.” Genji says. “I think I could love Jesse is I put my mind to it. I don’t think it would be a good idea, that’s the problem.”

“Let me tell you something, Shimada.” Gabriel says. “First, if you date then it’s no problem. Most of Blackwatch is off the books. Second, I say you think about it some more and see if you’ll be happier that way.”

Genji isn’t convinced of Gabriel’s first statement. “Even if it’s off the books don’t you think Morrison would bust a nut if he found out?”

Gabriel spits out his coffee, splattering his desk. “ _ What? _ ”

Genji doesn’t see what’s so surprising. “Morrison, don’t you think he’ll be unhappy to know?”

“Shimada, what do you think ‘bust a nut’ means?”

“It means to get really angry. Mrs. Amari told me.”

Gabriel inhales hard, and then he begins to laugh so hard he falls out of his chair. It’s a little insulting, but Genji sips at his coffee in reply. He gets the feeling he’ll be here for some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna have Gabriel call Genji a thot but it wasn't as funny when I reread.


	12. Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you saw some updates with the fic, know it was an accident and I somehow posted chapter 12 again into chapter 13. Technical difficulties, 13 is still a WIP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter are heavy violence, racism against McCree’s mixed race-ethnicity, blood, and mouth/facial trauma.

It is rarely that Genji and Jesse are on missions together. Most of Genji’s missions are solo, and most of Jesse’s are as Reyes’ right hand man. Even on the missions they do have together Genji is on the other side of fighting. He goes in ahead, thins the herd, and then Jesse and Reyes will come in with guns blazing.

This mission needed Genji and Jesse together for a simple reason. “Everyone in that warehouse is willing to die for their group, they have nothing to lose, we need people who can handle that.” Reyes told Genji before the mission briefing.

“Never thought I’d see that wearhouse again.” Genji replied. “Last time I was there I was nineteen and I banged Siyu while Jia watched.”

“I don’t know why you think I need to know about your old exploits.” Reyes grouched. “Just restrain whoever you can, and try not to die.”

Easily done. Genji had survived far worse than a warehouse full of weapon smugglers. Shanghai was as pretty as Genji remembered, if smoggier. If he had time he’d check up on Keiki once he was done, see how she was doing.

Before then they had work to do.

“I’m out of zip ties.” Jesse tells Genji. The whole thing was winding down, and the both of them only came out with bruises.

“I’m not.” Genji says and tosses him a baggie filled with them. “It looks like there is not much left. Should we head back inside?”

Jesse glanced behind him to the empty street littered with three restrained and injured men, as well as two dead people. “This felt too easy, you know?”

“Of course, it is because I am with you now, and I am the best.”

“And humble.” Jesse smiles at him, all friendly and wry with that deep emotion that makes Genji’s stomach squirm. “I guess you’re right.”

He’s spoken too soon.

Genji’s sensors light up with the alarm of hostile 1.6 meters away two seconds before he sees the person. Then he realizes that no, it’s not hostile towards him, the person is going for Jesse. He darts to the side with the intent to dash forward and go for the kill.

He’s beaten to the punch. Jesse’s moved to the side in surprise that the metal bar thunks hard into his right shoulder. Had it hit his head then he would have been splattered all over the ground in front of Genji. The person winds back for another hit and Genji rushes forward. The hunk of metal gets him instead, clipping hard into the side of his face. It hurts like hell, but he’s glad that his jaw isn’t organic or it’d be in splinters. He reels back and tries to clear his vision.

His sensors don’t need his sight to get a read on someone. There’s a thousand little bits of information coming in but the one that catches his attention the most is the fact that the person has a gun.

The gun is trained at the back of Jesse’s head. Genji’s vision whites out in rage.

There’s a phrase his father told Genji once. Give no quarter, he said. It was what one used to describe the act of not giving mercy to a person or group of people. Genji thinks about that once the haze clears from his head and the person under him has a face that is half blood and half bruise and minus a few teeth. He wonders how they got like that, and how long he’s been kicking the shit out of this person.

A woman, he sees. Jesse’s off to the side, still breathing, on his knees with one hand cradling what might be a fractured shoulder.

Genji stops, intent to check on his friend.

The woman grabs onto his ankle. It startles him, especially as he feels her fingers slice over the blades tucked away there. She doesn’t flinch and stares up at him. One eye is swollen shut, but the other is wide and brown, clouded with the yellow of an alcoholic. “You.” She says in Chinese. “What the hell are you?”

He yanks his foot free, her fingers slicing deeper over the blade. “Don’t touch me.”

“Whatever you are.” She says, weak and hysteric. “Are you the same thing that killed the Chens when they were in Hainan?”

He glares down at her. The answer to that is yes, but she has it wrong. He only killed two members and a handful of security. Genji’s second cousin and his wife, two people who he’d known to approve of his murder. It had to be done, and he didn’t regret it, but he did regret the twenty other people who died that night as the remaining family members dissolved into chaos among themselves. “I don’t have to answer you.”

She seems to find the answer in the non-response he’s supplied her with. “The fucking Americans have the Chenkiller.” She struggles to prop herself up on her elbows, still laying back.

Genji stops that before she can get far and stamps down hard on her chest. “Stay down. Your other men are gone, your leader arrested. You’re lucky I didn’t kill you for trying to kill my friend.”

“Uh, Genji.” Jesse says, voice high with pain. “I don’t know a fuckin’ thing you or the lady are saying.”

The woman ignores Jesse. “I wanted to kill at least one of you bitches.” She says. “You don’t sound like home. Japanese? The stupid american called you Genji.”

Genji waits a second to think of a response. “Nickname, he can’t pronounce my real name so he calls me that.” He lies.

She snorts and glances over at where Jesse is still on the ground. “You let the Americans have you on a leash? You could kill me. Him. Anyone here. I saw you take down my friends. Why not take it farther?”

“And what, kill someone the way you tried to kill my friend?”

She turns her head and looks at Jesse, still in Chinese. “The bastard would be better off dead. You know his kind breed faster than rabbits. There’ll be one to replace him in no time.”

Genji flicks his foot and the blade on his leg flips out in front of her face. He trails the blade down until its resting just over her neck. When he stomps down, and he will, he’ll tear the flap that keeps what comes down her throat out of her lungs. He’ll drag his leg up until the tear opens down her neck and she can’t keep it from going down the wrong pipe. How dare she speak about Jesse that way. How dare she try to hurt the only man who’s ever given a fuck about Genji beyond his looks and what he could gain from him. He’s done it a dozen times, it’s his least favorite way to kill someone because it’s so much blood. He isn’t a sadist, his family could never force that on him, but he wants to see this woman drown in her own blood.

“Genji.” Jesse says.

He pauses. “What.”

“You-” Jesse swallows with an audible and painful-sounding gulp. “She’s down. You don’t have to kill her.”

Genji laughs once, harsh and bitter. “You think anyone will let her live enough to get to the police? Her own men will kill her before then, or she’ll be killed for her crimes here.”

Jesse exhales, shaky. “You ain’t an executioner. That’s not your job. Let’s just bring her in, ‘kay?”

Genji glares down at the woman by his feet. The blade is already a centimeter into her skin, not deep enough to puncture her throat, but deep enough that she’s bleeding already. It would be so easy to ignore Jesse and kill the woman with a swipe of his foot.

She spits up at him, the glob of bloody phlegm missing and hitting the asphalt. It’s so pathetic. Genji pulls his foot back and the blade flicks back into place.

“Feel lucky, I have an angel on my shoulder tonight.” He snarls down at her.

“Pussy bitch.” She snarls back. “Why listen to that mix-breed trash?” Her mangled grin is bloody.

He looks over at Jesse in order to resist the urge to smash her face in. “She says to kill her anyways.”

“Christ, Genji. You don’t have to kill her!” McCree exclaims. “No one is making you! Do you want to kill her?”

It’s not hard to contemplate. The answer is a hard yes. He wants to kill her for trying to kill Jesse and having the gall to degrade him as if being mixed race makes Jesse disgusting. The only thing staying his hand is that he doesn’t want to kill her in front of Jesse.

Genji leaves the woman on the ground. It’s not like she’s going anywhere. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah, Give me a hand?”

He takes Jesse’s hand and pulls him up with his good arm. “We should head back.”

“Yeah.”

“Let me look at you.” Genji says.

“You ain’t a healer.” Jesse waves him off. “Lets go. I can’t look at that lady right now.”

“McCree.”

“Shimada.” Jesse says, drawing out his deep drawl in a way that should not be as distracting as it is. “I’m fine. Can we go?”

“Shimada.” Genji hears another voice say.

He turns. The woman is propped up on one elbow, her one visible eye fixed on him. “Shimada.” She repeats. “The Chens… Shimada…”

Her face dawns in horror and realization. “Shimada. Hanzo is in Japan. Gen-”

Lifting Peacekeeper from Jesse’s belt takes one motion. Shooting the woman between the eyes takes another.

Jesse sucks in a breath. “Christ.”

Genji slides the revolver back into Jesse’s belt. “Watch who you use my name with. Genji is common, Shimada is not.”

Jesse takes a deep breath and steadies himself. “Okay. Sure. How far is it to get back to the transport?”

Genji takes a moment to consider the bits of information fluttering around the inside of his mask. “Our transport is only a five minute walk from here.” He calculates.

“Better get going then.” Jesse says and bumps his head affectionately against Genji’s mask. He then takes a careful step back from Genji so they can walk side by side.

The dusty warehouse is full of people just like the woman Genji left behind. Half of them are dead, the other half are restrained. He figures those were the ones who didn’t die or have the chance to kill themselves before they could get a zip tie fastened around their legs and arms. It’s easy to get out of those considering one just needs a shoe that can be laced, or any loose fabric that can be looped through them. Genji would know, he’d had a minute to get out of them when he was twelve.

Reyes eyes the both of them as they come closer. “Genji, you look like a slaughterhouse.”

“And you have a mess to clean up outside on the northwest end.” Genji says. “Jesse got a rebar to the shoulder.”

“It was bigger than a rebar.” Jesse corrects him.

“Fine, Jesse got a big metal stick to the shoulder.” Genji snips. “Might be fractured.”

Reyes looks at Jesse closer now. “Did you kill the person who did it?”

Jesse side-eyes Genji. “He sure wrecked the lady’s shop before he got done.”

Genji doesn’t answer and goes into the transport. Jesse follows a minute later, settling into the seat next to Genji like always. He doesn’t flinch when Jesse puts his arm around Genji and slumps against him, but instead awkwardly pats Jesse’s head.

“What did ya tell her earlier?” Jesse says.

“I said a lot of things to that bitch.” Genji says. He’s getting cranky, he can’t help it, but he won’t move away. The blood that dripped into the kinks of his armor is starting to dry and get sticky.

“What you said to her before you walked away.” Jesse says. “She looked at me after you spoke to her.”

“Ah.” Genji grunts. “I told her that she was lucky you were here, since I normally don’t have a shoulder angel on hand.”

Jesse’s laugh is nervous. “I would have thought that Angela would be your go-to angel gal?”

“Angela doesn’t make me half as good a man as you do.” Genji scoffs.

Jesse makes a high pitched hum. “Thanks.”

Genji glances over at the man, but he’s looking away. His grip on the edge of the metal seat leaves his knuckles white, and the grip of Jesse’s fingers on Genji’s arm is tighter. Genji wonders if Jesse wants more in this moment. Give him a hug, a shoulder bumped against his, a hand on top of Genji’s. It would be easy for him to do it. He could reach over and smooth his hand on Genji’s and lean against him.

No, Jesse was obvious, but he wouldn’t cross that line.

Genji made the move instead and rocked to the side, bumping his shoulder to Jesse’s. “She also called you American Trash. I had to stop myself from saying that Morrison was back at HQ.”

Jesse snorts at that and bumps him back. “You’re really carryin’ a hate-torch for him huh? What’s with that?”

“It’s a conspiracy I suppose, but I can’t help but feel he’s hiding something from me.” Genji speculates. “Can you tell me any stories I can use against him if he tries to pick a fight with me?”

“Take me up on that later.” Jesse says. “You gotta show me that tongue piercing first. No one believes me.”

“Noted. When’s your birthday?”

Jesse laughs and Genji feels significantly better. Perhaps being loved isn’t a bad thing? Genji takes that thought and carefully puts it away to examine later, for now he has to make sure Jesse’s bad arm isn’t jostled.


	13. Smolder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings that I am aware of!

Genji had been to America about three times in his life. Las Vegas was one of those trips, and he had fond memories of that time.

He was seventeen and underage for most of Las Vegas. Did that stop him? No, it did not, and he had three fake IDs for China, Japan, and America. American Genji had been listed as Takashi Tanaka, age 22, from California. He’d explained away his accent by saying he’d spent a summer with family in Japan. To say he'd gone wild would be an understatement.

Sin City, he’d heard it called once. He likes to call it “the only city where I was banned from more than half the bars in town” and leave it at that. At least he thinks that number is right. The memories clicked out after his third day, where he assumes he got blackout drunk. He remembers the eighth day when he woke up in his hotel room, and not in that bar with fifty cent shots. He then spent an hour sick over the toilet while Hanzo read a magazine and wiped sweat out of his eyes.

… okay, so he  _ assumes  _ they were good memories, since he only remembers a quarter of time. It’s odd he’s getting a second go at Las Vegas after such a change, but perhaps it is for the best. He doesn’t want to get kicked out of half the city again.

Genji going with Reyes’ normal crew on missions in the Americas is a rare event. Most of his business is in Asia, and any offers to tag along to other places are turned down.

Then Reyes mentioned Las Vegas. Genji had to jump at the opportunity. He doesn’t have much left of himself in the world but there might be something left in Vegas. The only downside is he can’t look like a military grade cyborg in public.

Genji’s civilian getup is complex. The mask is made of warm black knit and sits against the synthetic material of his jaw to cover up what is clearly non-human. The scars on his upper face are covered in makeup, and if anyone asks about the mask he can always say he has bad scarring and leave it at that.

A long sleeved shirt covers up his upper half, also made of knit. It molds to the unnatural contours of his body so he looks bulky rather than inorganic. The simple plating on his exposed hand looks like a regular prosthetic to the untrained eye. With jeans and sneakers to finish off the ensemble he looks less horrible and marginally less shady. It would be fine.

His eyes give him the most trouble. Not because they are unnatural, but that they look too human. Angela had been able to salvage his natural eye color and make his eye implants smaller and less noticeable in the past year. Now they are the same natural liquor-brown as they’d always been. It makes him feel uneasy after them having been a hot red for a long time. To look into a mirror and see something familiar now feels unfamiliar.

Flipping off the mirror doesn’t help. With the dressing up done and over with Genji has to find his cowboy.

It isn’t hard to track him down. At the same time about every day Jesse can be found with his hat tipped over his eyes taking a nap. It’s always before preparations for dinner so he can sneak into the kitchens refreshed and ready to help. Help, and steal bites of food as it’s getting made. Genji has listened to Reyes complain enough to know that’s likely Jesse’s main motivation.

Genji finds him on the couch of the safehouse. It was a simple mission here, but Jesse’s still snoring.

He isn’t kind and puts a hand on Jesse’s shoulder to jostle him.

Jesse’s snores snuff out, and the man bats Genji’s hand away. “‘S it dinner time?”

“I am going.” Genji says. “You should come with me.”

Jesse squints one eye up at Genji, then blinks his eyes open. “You’re going out?”

“Yes.”

“As a civ?”

“Yes.” Genji repeats. “And you should come with me.”

“Where are you going?” Jesse says. Genji hopes that Jesse doesn’t mean to stare. It feels wrong to look so human.

Genji clicks his tongue. “It’s called The Gamer’s Lair. It’s this place where people drop off their kids who’re too young to drink, but it’s the best arcade I’ve ever been to.”

Jesse laughs. “An arcade? We’re in Vegas, and you want to go to an arcade?”

“ _ You  _ were going to spend all night napping and then helping Reyes cook.” Genji throws back in his face. “I already bought myself a pass that gives me unlimited cola and nachos. You can do that while I clear the place out of any mood rings they have.”

“Mood rings?”

“Are you coming or not?” Genji taps his foot on the ground.

“Yeah- yeah sure. Sorry. I ain’t ever known this about’cha.” Jesse’s smile is warm. “Arcade games. It’s easy to forget that- uh- nevermind.”

Genji wonders if Jesse was about to say that it’s easy to forget that Genji can enjoy anything. Probably, the man is so transparent. “Get freshened up, we head out in ten minutes.”

Jesse’s idea of freshening up is putting on a fresh shirt and boots without spurs, which is fine. They have to walk sixteen blocks away for the cab to pick them up, since Reyes wouldn’t let them get picked up at the safehouse. Genji understands, so he doesn’t question it. His makeup is sweatproof regardless, so the hot night doesn’t bother him as much as heat normally does.

“You going to rob a place?” Their cab driver jokes.

“My face actually got busted in half in a car crash, thanks for noticing.” 

The cab driver doesn’t say a damn thing the rest of the drive. Good, Genji can’t stand strangers trying to bother him. Car crash is an easy enough lie. Even with how automated cars are these days there are always accidents, and it’s easy to get hit. Jesse doesn't seem affected by the awkward atmosphere, but that’s how he is. Genji acts like he doesn’t notice Jesse’s knee pressed firmly to his, their legs against each other all the way down.

The contact feels nice for Genji, but it leaves him conflicted. He feels a great deal of affection for Jesse, but is it amorous? Maybe. He doesn’t like to think about it. Genji thinks back to the other times Jesse’s been like this.

It’s an ongoing line of thought. Reyes had said Jesse had it bad for more than a year. He’s been with them for close to two. Had Jesse liked him before he’d seen Genji’s face? Before they were even friends? It’s been bothering him. The other things bothering him are easy to ignore. The thoughts he has when they are alone is impossible anyways.  _ What if I kiss him right now? What if I flirt with him? What if I ask for him to sleep with me? What if I told him I like him too? _

He won’t do that to Jesse. Not until he’s sure. He can’t hurt him like that.

“Earth to Genji? You're spacin' out.” Jesse says.

“Thinking about you.” Genji replies. “And how no one ever recognizes you and your dumbass hat.”

“Excuse you.” Jesse says. “But every hick in the heat who could pull off a cowboy hat wore one ‘round my parts.”

“How are you a hick? You are not stupid or white.”

“Tell that stupid part to the guys who bullied me in high school. I don’t think hick is just about white people. That might be redneck.” He raises his voice. “Hey sir? Do you think Hicks have to be white?”

“No.” says the cab driver. “I’d say you’re thinking Hillbilly.”

“Slang escapes me.” Genji mutters. “Jack and Gabriel are both American and they sometimes do not understand you.”

“Jack?” Jesse asks.

Genji gives a pointed look at the cab driver. Jesse gets it right away and nods at him. No reason to namedrop. Reyes and Morrison are quickly becoming household names. Genji won’t have their cover blown by a curious cabbie. He wouldn’t call Morrison by his first name in any other case. They’re not friends, and Genji has an itching feeling the man is hiding something about Genji's involvement in overwatch.

He puts the thought out of his head for now. This is a night to enjoy with Jesse, not to sink into his normal state of mind.

Genji still isn’t sure how tipping works in America, so he gives the cabbie a ten dollar bill as the tip. Jesse doesn’t comment on it, and he’s not about to ask Jesse how much extra money he should give the man.

“So what is this place?” Jesse asks.

“It is called The Gamer’s Den, I told you earlier.” Genji says and leads the way for the both of them.

To most people the flashing and noise of an arcade would be the opposite of relaxing. Genji is different. It’s a wonderful blissed-out white noise for him. In the same way one can listen to a babbling brook with the occasional birdsong, Genji enjoys the constant beeps marked by an occasional screaming siren to alert a winner.

He gives them both two hours until they’re kicked out.

Until then, he cranks thirty dollars worth of change into the token machine, getting enough to fill his jacket pocket.

“I feel a little out of place here.” Jesse says.

He’s not wrong to feel that way. It's mostly teenagers filling the building, and Genji figures that Jesse might be the oldest person here other than the workers. “Do not worry.” Genji says. “I doubt anyone will see you as a threat to the young ones here. I am only here to check on something and then win all the mood rings that are in this building.”

“What should I do?” Jesse asks. “It’s not like I’ve got anythin' to do without you.”

Genji shoves a handful of tokens into Jesse’s grasp. “Win me tickets at the shooting games, break some high scores. I want to have a good time with you.”

Jesse looks away at that. It's something Genji suspects he does when feeling flustered. “Alright. What was it that you wanted to do first?”

“Oh!” Genji says. “Thank you for reminding me. I hope they have not gotten rid of the game I want to check out.”

He doesn’t grab Jesse’s hand or sleeve or anything, the cowboy follows close enough that he doesn’t need it. This night is putting Genji in an usually good mood. Is it the arcade or Jesse’s presence or some combination of the two things? Odds are it’s the combination. Jesse isn’t enough to make any situation fun, but he gets close sometimes. Lena might be more fun to hang out with, but Jesse makes him happy.

“Ah, there it is!” Genji points it out. There’s a girl finishing up her playing, so Genji can get in there without having to awkwardly wait his turn behind someone else.

“What’s this?” Jesse glances at the game up-and-down. “It looks like Galaga.”

Genji knows this particular console is nothing special. There’s no fancy flashes or controls. It’s just a joystick, three buttons, and a retro feel to the game. The problem was that there was one like it at Hanamura, and it was his favorite game there. Seeing it here had been like a beacon when he was seventeen, and he’d spent most of that night glued to the console.

“You know what is neat about this game?” Genji says after he starts it up. “It will not show you the high scores until you get finished. I want to see how well I do after not playing it in two years.”

The man beside him frowns, watching the screen as the little soldiers pop up on the screen. “I thought you came here as a teenager?”

“There was one like this back in Japan too.” Genji explains. “I love it.”

It was something like a combination of chess and Galaga, where one puts the soldiers in the right spaces to counterattack the oncoming army. Then one would lose once the soldiers on the other side kill all the ones the player controls, or the army gets across the screen. It’s less about the fast hands and more about the quick thinking and strategy. He's glad that it’s not something he can cheat with his superior reflexes.

He lasts five minutes. Jesse wanders off in that time, checking out the layout of the building or whatever he does when he’s in a new place. He comes back with a soft drink and a sizable amount of popcorn. Genji gratefully steals a sip of the cola, a brown bubbly thing with a taste of artificial cherry.

“So how are you doing?”

“Fine.” Genji says. “I’m about to lose if I can’t kill that tank in tim-” The screen flashes, a bright GAME OVER blinking at him. His score pops up, and then the list of high scores with his ranking on it.

“Whoops.” Jesse says. “Is this really what you got so hyped up about? I don’t get it.”

Genji points at the screen. His score now doesn’t come close to the leaderboard but he has a point to make, and boy is he feeling vindicated.

There on the high score board in big neon-blue letters it was still there after all this time.

GENJI.SHIM ................... 1,253,869,420

And immediately below.

SCRWGENJI ................... 526,934,710

“What.” Jesse says. “How- what?”

“I did this last time I came here.” Genji can feel himself grinning under the warm knit of his mask. “I was sixteen hundred points away from the world record on this game. No one has reset the high score since they want others to try and beat me.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.” Genji says.

“And it’s been unbeaten for  _ that long? _ ” Jesse’s mouth is in a wide gape at the screen.

He feels far too pleased with himself. “It seems to be so.” He taps in a new name for the new score. COWBOY………….. 467392440

“Is that the only reason you wanted to come?” Jesse asks.

“Hell no.” Genji says. “I’m going to clear this place out until they kick me out.”

He does exactly that. Jesse isn’t too bad at the shooting games, and decent at the games that need timing and precision to get more tokens or tickets. Genji loops the tickets around his arm like orange paper bandages until it’s hard to move his arm. Once it gets to that point he leaves Jesse at the deer hunt game and heads to the counter.

The first round, he has one thousand and twenty-six tickets. The mood rings are ten tickets each.

They don’t let him take all the rings. They only let him take half of the little plastic basket worth, leaving him with four hundred. The little cartoon erasers are five each. Also unfair that they don’t let him take all of those. With the last two hundred tickets of this round he buys something else and stuffs it in the pocket of his hoodie.

His pockets are not secure enough to hold all of his treasure. Thankfully Jesse is nice enough to hold Genji’s rings on the necklace he wears with his military tags on them. Genji’s prediction runs true an hour and five thousand tickets later.

Genji isn’t sure what ended up drawing the line for the ticket counter.

“I think they found out that you didn’t actually get fifteen more mood rings for your 'cousins' at home.” Genji says once they’re outside with the doorman glaring daggers at them.

“Maybe.” Jesse says as he admires the shiny teal-blue color of the ring on his pinky. “If ya’ ask me I think it was because you cleared out the claw machine and gave them away to any kid passing by.”

“Those things are rigged, you know.” Genji says. “Have you called a cab to get us?”

“Yup.” Jesse says. “Commander Reyes knows to expect us back in half a’ hour from now.” The taller man checks his phone. “He says ‘dont get dragged back in cuffs’ and then a police officer emoji. You can’t get arrested for getting like fifty mood rings, I don’t think. Hey, can I keep this one?”

Oh shit, he almost forgot. “Yeah you can have it. I got you something too.” Genji says and digs in the pocket of his hoodie.

“Oh?” Jesse says. “I can have somethin’ other than the mood ring? You’re spoilin’ m-” Jesse says and trails off as he sees what Genji has in his hand.

It was only two hundred tickets, but he’d seen it and knew he had to get it for Jesse. After all, a stuffed bear in a bandana and cowboy hat was the perfect thing for Jesse, even if it’s only big enough to fit in Genji’s hand. Small enough to hide in his hoodie as well, leaving the hat smushed on top of it’s head.

“It is thanks.” Genji says. “For coming with me. And for other things. You- you are always good to me. I appreciate that, you know? I appreciate you. You are the best person in my life now, and it helps. Nights like these keep me going, they remind me that sometimes it’s good to be alive.” Genji hopes that Jesse can pick up what he’s putting down.  _ You make my life worth living and I need that. _

Genji wonders if he can take it one step farther and make this a love confession. Is this love? This happy feeling that makes him feel like he could be a normal man. Lots of people as disfigured and disabled as him can have normal happy lives. That’s a nice thought, but not based in reality for him.

He clears his throat again. “You, uh, you make me happy. I’m glad you’re my friend.”

Jesse swallows hard, his eyes shiny. “I’m glad too.”

“Jesse, are you going to cry?”

“Maybe.”

Genji offers the bear again. “Do you want the bear or will I have to give it to Reyes as a gag?”

“Hell _ yes  _ I do, give him here.” Jesse takes it from his hand and tucks his hands around it. “I’m gonna name him Genji Jr.”


	14. Spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "ur trying to make me cry i hate u"- My wonderful beta reader <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for imagined death and blood, talks of suicide, death, and trauma.

Tonight he’s bent over his brother, sword in his hand buried up to the hilt through Hanzo’s neck and into his brother’s bed. The room is lit with pale moonlight that turns red blood silver. His brother is staring back at him, silent, save for the occasional gurgle that lets a line of blood slip out of the corner of his mouth. Genji usually doesn’t like to kill this way, would rather it be clean and quick, but this is how he’s going to do it. He sneers down at Hanzo, meeting his brother’s dark eyes and making sure he knows who’s killed him.

Something is wrong.

Genji twists the blade, and Hanzo’s mouth opens to let out a gush of blood and saliva. The word comes out like a bubble being popped. “Genji.” He says.

That’s not Hanzo’s voice.

Suddenly he’s not in Hanzo’s bedroom in Hanamura. He’s in a plain room with plaster walls painted off-white. There’s posters from old american movies and tacky magazines taped to the walls. The light is dim here, only illuminated by the end of a burning cigar. Black hair is brunette, light skin is brown, and Jesse is choking on the sword that Genji’s put through his throat.

A large hand goes up and cups Genji’s jaw, strong and warm against his face. “Genji.” Jesse says again, still trying to speak around the sword. “Why?”

Genji can only flex his fingers around the hilt of the sword. Why does he do this? Why does he hurt the people he cares about? He hurt his brother so much over the years and it led to him being killed. He’s hurt Angela to the point where they can hardly have a conversation without shouting at each other. And now he’s hurting Jesse, the only person alive who loves him.

“I don’t know.” He says.

Jesse watches him, and then his eyes unfocus off of his face. His head tilts back as he settles into the bed, making a disgusting slick sound as he slides down the sword. He breathes out one last time, and then the world shatters.

Genji’s eyes fly open and he gasps into the stagnant air of the night.

Genji doesn’t dream often, but when he does he often forgets them. This time is different. He scrubs a hand over his face and exhales hard. Great. It wasn’t a nightmare, he dreams of killing Hanzo with relish, but Jesse is a different matter. Jesse hasn’t been in any of his dreams yet, only in daydreams where he lets his mind run wild with maybes and what-ifs. Why couldn’t he have had a normal nightmare where he’s being chased by Moira’s fucked-up rabbits?

He needs some fresh air before this room suffocates him.

Blackwatch housing is underground, so it’s an elevator ride up to get to the main housing floor. He manages to scare some young agent with his appearance, but he doesn’t give a damn as he makes his way outside. He leans in the doorway of a side entrance he has clearing for, thankfully not setting off an alarm.

Switzerland is nothing like Japan. Genji almost likes it that way. He doesn’t get homesick often, and when he does he thinks about his favorite ramen place or the view from the rooftop of the tallest building in Hanamura. There are good memories from home, but those were before he hated Hanzo, when they got along and loved each other. Even those are tainted, with how horrible everything became once the clan got tired of humoring Genji.

A bright orange and blue blue catches his eye, and he sees the blur sprint across the grass near the perimeter of the base. Lena must be having a bad night like him. He hesitates, but lets the door close behind him. His feet touch the grass and he takes off after her. The flesh below the knee couldn’t be saved, but the muscles of his thighs still get warmed up as he pumps his legs to keep up with her.

She doesn’t slow down for him, but she doesn’t try to outrun him either. It’s not the kind of night where they take to the city to escape their nightmares, but something like that. Less escape and more solidarity.

He loses track of the time, only noting every time they circle the facility and he spots that one door again. Once the sky becomes less ink and more blue does Lena stop, and she does so with a tumble to the ground. Her breathing is hard and labored, and Genji doesn’t hover over her for it. He knows she will resent any worry for her since she’s done this to herself. It’s her way of coping, he supposes. To work herself until she can’t keep going and all the energy is drained from her.

It’s remarkable how much of a wreck she can be when she isn’t putting on a mask. He sits down next to her, and she rolls over onto her back and hoists herself into a sitting position. They relax in silence until Lena catches her breath, and then she’s pushing her sweaty bangs out of her face to peer at him.

“Hey.” Lena says to finally break the silence. “Can I ask a personal question?”

“Yes.” Genji gives her permission without hesitation.

“What keeps ya’ from killing yourself?”

Genji doesn’t let his surprise at the dark question show. He has an answer ready, one he’s thought of for a while, so he can reply smoothly. “Knowing that I can destroy what destroyed me keeps me from taking that final step. Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been on suicide watch the last week.” Lena sighs. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but Morrison let it slip.”

Genji rolls his eyes. “I can tell when I’m on suicide watch because that’s when Moira is the one in charge of my medical care. She’s not as soft as Angela and can handle me at my worst.”

Lena curls her knees up so her chin rests on top of them. “I feel like this place is going to kill us.”

Genji has to crack a smile. “If you were in Blackwatch you’d have known that within a week of joining. I… am prepared to die doing this.” Genji isn’t sure what he’ll do if he ever does kill Hanzo and burn the Hanamura castle to the ground like how he does in his dreams. He knows that’s not what Lena means, but it’s close.

Lena inhales slowly, and exhales slower. “I want to find out what’s being hidden here. I’m owed that. You’re owed that. They have us trapped here. You got to walk again and I got to stay in one place again, and in exchange they want our lives.”

“You’re oddly dark tonight.” Genji reaches over and flicks her goggles hard. Lena doesn’t react other to flinch, and then give him a fond smile.

The silence between them is calm, and they watch the stars together. How sad, that the both of them are stuck here like this. Technically they can both run away, but it would be too dangerous. They’re both one malfunction away from being in hell, and the last thing Genji wants is that. What’s worse, he thinks: being lost in space in time or being stuck in a metal body you can’t escape?

“Hey.” Genji says. “Do you love Emily.”

“Yes.” Lena doesn’t hesitate. “I loved her two months after we met.”

“How did you know.”

“She stayed on a call with me for twelve hours, once. I couldn’t sleep and so she had me set up the holocall to make it look like she was laying next to me. It was… odd. I could tell it was a hologram but it felt like I could reach over and touch her. We talked and I still couldn’t sleep. Then I just- I just started weeping. I don’t know what came over me, but it was… vulnerable. She told me to let it out and I did. When I was done I felt lighter than I had in months.”

Genji has to smile at her while Lena keeps talking. “Then I blew my snotty nose, dark a bottle of water, and passed out. When I woke up she was still on the call and asleep with her holographic head phased halfway through my pillow. I knew I wanted to be with her forever and that no one makes me feel whole like her, and if that’s not love then what is?”

Lena pauses, clearly thinking. Then she turns and looks Genji right in the face. “Plus the cybersex is amazing.”

Genji isn’t phased. “I bet it is.”

Lena falls back and blows out a breath of air. “It’s more than that though. I stay in love with her, and I love her more every day. With her it’s like I don’t have to be Tracer, the anomaly who’s going to bring us forward.” Lena’s voice is thick. “I can be me. I can be broken and an anomaly but I can be myself and all those things at the same time. I don’t have to be one thing with her.”

“It’s… I love her so much. I love her and- and- and I can let her in. She can see all of me and know all of me and it doesn’t scare her. She isn’t  _ scared _ and it grounds me when I’m terrified. She’s… she’s steady for when time and place spins away from me. Emily is just, she- she  _ gets  _ me. She likes my dumb snorting laugh and my messy hair. She loves my spray paint art, my model planes, my nightmares, anxiety, mania, trauma, my favorite tacky lesbian bands. She loves me, and that’s… that’s incredible. It’s hard to feel real when it takes one accident for me to slip away but she’s my tether.” Tracer laughs, and Genji pretends to not notice her tears. Tears of sorrow or joy? He won’t ask her.

“And you know I like you Genji.” Lena says, and flops back in the wet grass again. “You’re a comfort to me. Winston is my best friend, but we can be as awful as we want together. I’m not afraid of being ugly in front of you.”

It’s sweet of her to say so. Genji catches himself smiling under his mask, and lets it fall away. “I like you too, Lena.”

“Hey, why’d you ask? You got love on the brain?” Her leggings are stained with grass at this point with how much she’s squirming around on the ground.

He deflects the question. “Do you think a person can choose when to fall in love?”

“Not exactly.” Lena shrugs. She doesn’t chase her question, thankfully. “I think its more about active and passive. Hard to articulate.”

Genji worries his lip with his teeth. “I feel like… I need to make a choice. I know I could die on any mission. I know that being in love could damage me and them. I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

Lena has a question. “Is it Ziegler?”

“ _ No. _ She’s my doctor, Lena. She would never.”

“Would you, though?”

“I would but I won’t. She just did as she was ordered but it’s hard to love someone who held my autonomy in her hands.” Genji waves a hand. “It’s McCree.”

“McCree.” Lena says, and her eyes widen. “McCree? As in Jesse McCree? You like him?”

“I’m a healthy pansexual man, I’ve always been a little attracted to him. He loves me, though. I don’t know if I want to love him back and make it into a relationship.”

“Do you want my advice?”

“No.”

“What? Why?”

“Because when you met Emily she complimented you on your short nails and your short haircut. What was your response?" Genji begins.

"Genji  _ please _ let me live."

"Oh right! Your response was to call her flannel a ‘boyfriend shirt’ to her face and tell her it was chic.”

“Okay to be  _ fair  _ we weren’t in a gay bar!” Lena exclaims. "Leave me alone!"

“What kind of straight woman compliments short nails?” Genji asks.

“Moira’s a lesbian and she has long nails!”

“Moira also wears suits when she goes out to get coffee.” Genji snorts at her. “Ah, I had a good laugh when Angela told me how she had to be the one to clue you in.”

“I take it back, I actually hate you.” Lena grumbles and shoves his shoulder. “What are you going to do about McCree?”

“I don’t know.” Genji says. “I know he’ll be good to me, but this whole thing is temporary.”

“Life is temporary.” Lena says.

That… is a fantastic point. “You’re smarter than you act.”

“Thanks it’s how I cope. If people think I’m dumb then they let their guard down.” She admits.

Genji’s used the ditzy playboy act in his youth when he needed to get someone alone and beat the shit out of them or kill them for the clan. It’s also remarkably like something Jesse said once. About how if people think he’s an uneducated hick they don’t expect him being good at anything. It’s a balance between getting irritated and taking advantage of it.

…

If his thoughts immediately go to Jesse like this, then he might as well dive in. He wants Jesse, and Jesse wants him. He just hopes he doesn't screw it up. “Okay.” He says. “I’m going to seduce a cowboy.”

“Seduce is a bad word for it. Say romance instead.” Lena corrects him.

“Same meaning.”

“Connotation is important, Genji! The language of love has a lot of connotations. You need to use the right one or you’ll never sweep him off of his feet!” Lena exclaims. “You’ll never fall in love before you die if you don’t use your words right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is officially the second-to-last chapter! To think it took 14 chapters for Genji to decide he wants a relationship.


	15. Ignition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hospital stuff, and a lot of emotional talk. Thanks for sticking with me everyone, hope you like the final chapter.

Genji is sure that somewhere there’s a screen that can tell what he’s feeling at all times. That a computer can process the chemicals firing in his brain and the electric current in his nerves and form a story. How else can people know when he’s feeling suicidal and put him on the correct watch for it? A screen somewhere might be showing his unpleasant thoughts right now, just like the heart monitor he’s attached to. He’s used to hospital screens.

Perhaps it is paranoia that makes him think that, but he isn’t sure. There are times when Reyes refuses to look Genji in the eyes after he’s spent a night trying and failing to ease some of the pain with self-employed tactics. 

Masturbating. He can’t masturbate himself to completion and he feels like there’s a window into his soul that he isn’t aware of. He would like that closed and then blocked out with tinfoil like he’s running a meth lab in his body. 

“You’re being quiet.” Jesse says. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“Masturbation.” Genji says. 

Jesse does a big surprised inhale and then coughs hard. Genji can’t see what Jesse is doing because he’s on his back and both his legs are missing so he can’t roll over. “What did you just do?” Genji asks. 

“Ah, choked on my carmel.” Jesse says. “Sorry. That just- came outta nowhere huh?”

“Roll me on my side.” Genji says. “I want to face you while we talk.”

“Sure.” He hears Jesse’s footsteps and Genji grips the bed railing. He sees Jesse leaning over him. Genji feels the hand on his waist and he pulls at the same time as Jesse until he’s on his side. 

“Now stuff a pillow behind me so I don’t roll over again. And some under my hip. Make me into a pillow sandwich.” Genji dictates. 

It’s not as nice as when Angela or her nurses do it, but it’s passable. Genji raises the head of his bed on his own so he can face Jesse better. Jesse’s been sitting with him all night. It’s fine, it doesn’t bother him, and Jesse was there when his legs malfunctioned and went dead on him. Kept him from landing face-first into Moira’s rabbit pens, actually, and then he would have gotten hell if he damaged any of her prize-winners. 

“There, good?” Jesse asks. 

“Yes. You said you had caramels?”

“I said I’ve got  _ carmels _ .”

“No one gives a shit about dialects, McCree, give me a fucking sweet.” Genji deadpans. 

“I’m kiddin’ ya, darling. Here.” He drops an unwrapped candy into Genji’s hand which he pops in his mouth right away. He doesn’t know the brand, but it’s everywhere and it’s delicious. He doesn’t have a sweet tooth, but he’d pick caramel or chocolate over fruity sweets any day.

“Thanks.” Genji says. “And thank you as well for staying with me. It gets boring just watching the local television.”

“Why not?”

“It might be because I don’t speak German.” Genji snorts. 

“Oh. Yeah, that’s obvious.” Jesse chuckles. 

Genji gets a bad idea. 

He has had a lot of bad ideas. Ideas like losing his virginity at fourteen to a person he never saw again. Or having the idea many times of taking party drunks and drinking like a monster on benders for weeks at a time. Or coming home after father’s death and then thinking that Hanzo would make his death painless. Then there are the ideas he’s had in Blackwatch. Staying alive, being friends with Jesse, late-night stunts with Lena, befriending Moira, and then this. 

This very bad idea. 

“Hey.” Genji says. 

“Mhm?”

“We’re friends, yes?” He asks. 

“Of course.” Jesse says. 

“I want to have a serious conversation, but I fear for the status of that friendship if it goes wrong.” Genji cautions. 

“Whatever you want to say, just say it. In fact, I’d probably be angrier with you if you were keeping something important from me. Wait, is that? Are you about to tell me something I should have known about?” Jesse’s eyes are searching. 

“Do not jump to conclusions when I am preparing to be serious.” Genji says. “It makes me not want to talk about it.”

Jesse snorts at him. “You sure can get defensive when you feel like getting personal about-”

“I know that you love me.” Genji interrupts. 

Jesse freezes. 

They stare at each other for a long moment. Genji reads a number of emotions fllicker across Jesse’s face. Surprise at the statement, fear, then the fear gets toned down. Fear turns to awkwardness, and then to confusion. “Uh.” Jesse says. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Am I wrong?” Genji asks. 

Jesse ignores that. “What makes you think I’m in love with you?”

“You look at me the same way my parents would look at each other.” Genji says. “You’re unconditionally good to me, and kind. If you only had platonic feelings for me I don’t think you’d be as nice. You would give me as much shit as you do to Amari Jr or Reyes if that were the case.” Genji says. 

“So Reyes didn’t tell you?” Jesse sounds surprised.

“He would not do that.” Genji rolls his eyes. “What makes you think he would? He sees you like a son, but he respects you as well.”

Jesse looks away. “Nevermind.”

“No, I want to know.” Genji says. “What? Has he threatened to tell me in the past?”

“He…” Jesse coughs. “Yeah. I’ve spent a lot of time… talking about it.”

Genji feels a warmth in his chest. “Ah.” He says. 

“Were you going to go somewhere with this?” Jesse asks. 

“I was going to get there.” Genji says. “I… don’t know if I love you, but I like you too.”

“Oh.” Jesse pauses. “Do you? I haven’t noticed- or seen- I’ve been looking for a long time. I didn’t think you wanted that.” Jesse’s dark eyes are fixed on him. The meter of space between them feels like nothing for all the energy he can feel between them. 

“I did not.” Genji says. “I am going to say a lot of things you will not agree with now. Please be silent until I am done.”

“Oh boy.” Jesse says, but then he closes his mouth and Genji feels he can continue. 

“I thought you were stupid.” Genji says. “I recalled what you told me a long time ago. About how sometimes you feel you only like the idea of certain men and then feel bad about it. I thought you had a fixation with me, and that you had taken pity too far and it had turned into some kind of twisted need to find a reason to like me. That you only loved me because I was broken and would be desperate for you in turn if I reciprocated. I was confused and angry with you for loving me because I thought the worst.”

Jesse’s expression is schooled but Genji can see the hurt in his eyes. “What changed your mind?”

“I got a night of fucking sleep and realized I was being unfair to you and to myself.” Genji laughs and the caramel in his mouth falls out onto the sheet next to him. “I had a talk with Reyes a while after that and got some things cleared up.” He pops the candy back into his mouth. “Can you find where my water bottle went? I can’t feel if it’s down the bed.”

“Yeah, I see it, one moment.” Jesse gets up and snags the water bottle from somewhere Genji can’t see or feel. The man shifts the bottle up so Genji can get a hand on it. It’s not water, but green tea with ginger, his go-to drink for years. He takes a long drink, washing some of the lingering sweetness from the caramel. 

“Thank you.” Genji says. “Anyway, I realized that being loved by you is not a bad thing. I don’t know why you love me, but it’s not a problem. I’m not angry or disgusted with you. It’s fine.”

“I could give you a list of reasons, if you’d like.”

Genji pauses. “Okay.” He braces himself.

“Now you don’t get to interrupt me neither, okay?”

Genji’s lips press into a line. “Yes.”

“The first time we met,” Jesse says. “I thought you were authentic to the bone. Whatever happened to you, it whittled you down into something raw and ugly and genuine. I was fascinated with your body and interested in your personality. That was some real shallow shit, but it was the grounds for it. Then as we got into work together I got in deeper and deeper and then we were on the rooftop smoking together and you showed me your face for the first time. I’d seen it before, but you never showed it to me before that. I knew that all this deep feeling and obsession was something… tender. You make me feel tender.”

“It’s not pity.” Jesse says. “It’s love. I loved you. Still do. It’s… every time I spend time with you I find something I like. You’re scraped up and hurting all the time, but that makes you striking if you ask me. Your smile is small and subtle and now when you have your mask on I can tell when you’re smiling because your eyes crinkle a little at the edges. You tap and twist your fingers when you feel anxious. You like being around me. You keep me company and assure me that I’m a good man even when I don’t feel like it. Sometimes when I feel like being a bad person again I think no, I can’t let Genji down, because you mean a lot to me.”

Genji feels tears shining in his eyes. They fall, and Jesse stops. Jesse stands up and grabs his chair, scooting it closer so Jesse can lean against the hospital bed. “Here, can I…” Jesse’s hand hovers. 

Genji pulls it through the handle of the bed railing and rests his face on it. Jesse holds his face like that and Genji closes his eyes. “Keep going.” Genji says. His voice is too rough, always too rough, he hates it, but his voice synthesizer doesn’t work well with heavy emotion. 

“I like that too. Your voice is real interesting. Nice. I like the way it sounds naturally.” Jesse’s thumb strokes over Genji’s cheek, bumping his nose, and then across his lips. The old scars there tingle, but it’s not painful. It’s nice. The thumb goes back, just holding him in place. “I like your honesty. I like your drive and you’re beautiful when you’re in action. Did you know that? I can’t keep my eyes off of you when you’re in the heat of the moment.”

“Do you…” Genji’s voice is still thick, but he keeps going after a hard swallow. “Do you think it’s worth it, to persue a relationship?”

“I’d like to be your boyfriend.” Jesse says. “I’ve wanted that for a long time.”

“You have a hideously bad taste in men.” Genji scoffs and presses his face into Jesse’s hand.. 

“I think you’ll find I don’t tolerate people talking bad about the guys I take a shining to.” Jesse’s voice is gruff. Genji doesn’t want to open his eyes and he faced with that emotion that’s warping the man’s voice. Love. It’s love. He’s loved. “Do you want to be my boyfriend too?” Jesse asks. 

“Yes.” Genji says. “I feel like this is a bad idea. With the nature of our work, one of us could die on any mission. A thing might happen that we’ll end up on other sides of. We might break up and make the whole work effort worthless because we’re a team, and I don’t want that to be ruined by me fucking up.”

“Can you look at me?” Jesse asks. 

Genji does. Jesse’s face is closer, but not too close. His head is resting on top of the bed railing, over the arm that is pushed through it. “Any of that could happen without us being in a relationship.”

“What do you think?” Genji asks. 

“I think I want you more than I’ve wanted about anything.” Jesse looks like he’s fiddling with something, and then a creak makes the bedrail go down. Genji regrets the loss of the hand under his head, but Jesse’s arms are folded at the edge of the mattress and his head resting down on them. “What about you?”

“I don’t know.” Genji says. “I want you too. I don’t know if it is worth it on top of the trouble I already bring into your life. Or, in your own words, a whole lot of heartache for you.”

Jesse winces. “You telling me I was dramatic for saying that hurt a lot more than you almost throwing a knife into my throat.”

“See, that’s what I mean.” Genji says. “I don’t think I’m good for you. I think this is unequal. You love me and I don’t know what love is. I like you but I don’t know if I love you. I bring more pain into your life than you do for me. A relationship should be an exchange of emotions. Not me taking the best of you and you taking the worst of me.

“Don’t you think I should be the judge of that, though?” Jesse asks. “I know myself. I want to think about the ways you make me happy, and how I can do that for you.”

Genji closes his eyes and starts to think. Then he thinks that he’s spent enough time thinking and acts on another bad idea. “Can I kiss you?”

“Mm.” Jesse humms. “Sure, but only if you want to be my boyfriend. I don’t want to be a test or anything. I want to be yours, and for you to be mine. If you’re not sure then don’t ask for that.”

It’s fair. “I’m asking because I want to kiss my boyfriend.” Genji says. It’s one of the few things he’s been sure of in a long time.

The kiss doesn’t hurt at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic over! My first WIP totally finished! Big thanks to my beta reader Isa, my friends for listening to me yell about this, and for all my readers who've had to deal with me not updating since April. Love you all <3


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